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JULIAN HAWTHORNE'S RECENT NOVELS. 

Each in 1 vol. i2mo. $1.50. 

Loye — or a Name. Beatrix Randolph. 

Fortune's Fool. 

" Mr. Hawthorne has perhaps a more powerful imagination 
than any contemporary writer of fiction. ... In ' Fortune's 
Fool' this imagination shows best in his landscapes, in his 
description of New England forests, and in the picture he gives 
of the Sacramento Valley." — The Academy {London). 

" Like most that he has written, there is a suggestion of depth 
and intensity about it which is rare in modern fiction, and an 
hereditary instinct for dealing with the lights and shadows of 
the moral nature." — St. James's Gazette. 



Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife. 

By Julian Hawthorne. With portraits newly engraved on 
steel, and vignettes. 2 vols. i2mo. Cloth, $5; half mo- 
rocco or half calf, $9. 

" The fullest and most charming accounts of Hawthorne's an- 
cestry and family; his boyhood and youth; his courtship and 
marriage; his life at Salem, Lenox, and Concord; his travels 
and residence in England and Italy; his later life in America; 
and his chief works, and their motives and origins. An emi- 
nent English author pronounces this ' the most important and 
interesting biographical work since BosweWs Johnson? " 

" The most charming biography of the year, pure and sweet 
from beginning to end." — The Beacon {Boston). 



Dr. Grimshawe's Secret. 

By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Edited by Julian Haw- 
thorne. 1 vol. i2mo. $1.50. Library edition with frontis- 
piece and vignette. i6mo. Gilt top. $2.00. 

" The marks of Hawthorne's genius are evident on every page. 
The book is like a long-lost statue by the hand of Phidias." — 
Philadelphia press. 

For sale by Booksellers. Sent, post-paid, on receipt of the 
price, by the Publishers, 

TICKNOR AND COMPANY, Boston. 



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ONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS 



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BY 



JULIAN HAWTHORNE 




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OCT 29 1886 



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BOSTON 
TICKNOR AND COMPANY 

1887 



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,v° x 



Copyright, 1886, 
By Ticknor and Company. 



All Rights Reserved. 



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ELECTROTYPED BY 

C. J. Peters & Son, Boston. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. A Preliminary Confession 9 

II. Novels and Agnosticism 31 

III. Americanism in Fiction 71 

IY. Literature for Children 100 

Y. The Moral Aim in Fiction 128 

YI. The Maker of Many Books 140 

YII. Mr. Mallock's Missing Science 163 

YIII. Theodore Winthrop's Writings 172 

IX. Emerson as an American 186 

X. Modern Magic . 218 

XI. American Wild Animals in Art ..... 248 



CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 



CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 



CHAPTER I. 

A PRELIMINARY CONFESSION. 

In 1869, when I was about twenty-three years 
old, I sent a couple of sonnets to the revived Put- 
nam's Magazine. At that period I had no inten- 
tion of becoming a professional writer : I was 
studying civil engineering at the Polytechnic 
School in Dresden, Saxony. Years before, I had 
received parental warnings — unnecessary, as I 
thought — against writing for a living. During 
the next two years, however, when I was acting 
as hydrographic engineer in the New York Dock 
Department, I amused myself by writing a short 
story, called "Love and Counter-Love," which was 
published in Harper's Weekly, and for which I was 
paid fifty dollars. "If fifty dollars can be so easily 
earned," I thought, " why not go on adding to my 
income in this way from time to time ? " I was 
aided and abetted in the idea by the late Robert 

9 



10 CONFESSIONS AND CEITICISMS. 

Carter, editor of Appletons* Journal; and the lat- 
ter periodical and Harper's Magazine had the bur- 
den, and I the benefit, of the result. When, in 
1872, I was abruptly relieved from my duties in 
the Dock Department, I had the alternative of 
either taking my family down to Central America 
to watch me dig a canal, or of attempting to live 
by my pen. I bought twelve reams of large letter- 
paper, and began my first work, — " Bressant." I 
finished it in three weeks ; but prudent counsel- 
lors advised me that it was too immoral to publish, 
except in French : so I recast it, as the phrase is, 
and, in its chastened state, sent it through the 
post to a Boston publisher. It was lost on the 
way, and has not yet been found. I was rather 
pleased than otherwise at this catastrophe ; for I 
had in those days a strange delight in rewriting 
my productions: it was, perhaps, a more sensi- 
ble practice than to print them. Accordingly, I 
rewrote and enlarged " Bressant " in Dresden 
(whither I returned with my family in 1872) ; but 
— immorality aside — I think the first version was 
the best of the three. On my way to Germany I 
passed through London, and there made the ac- 
quaintance of Henry S. King, the publisher, a 
charming but imprudent man, for he paid me one 



A PRELIMINARY CONFESSION. 11 

hundred pounds for the English copyright of my 
novel: and the moderate edition he printed is, I 
believe, still unexhausted. The book was received 
in a kindly manner by the press ; but both in this 
country and in England some surprise and indig- 
nation were expressed that the son of his father 
should presume to be a novelist. This sentiment, 
whatever its bearing upon me, has undoubtedly 
been of service to my critics : it gives them some- 
thing to write about. A disquisition upon the man- 
tle of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and an analysis of the 
differences and similarities between him and his 
successor, generally fill so much of a notice as to 
enable the reviewer to dismiss the book itself very 
briefly. I often used to wish, when, years after- 
wards, I was myself a reviewer for the London 
Spectator, that I could light upon some son of 
his father who might similarly lighten my labors. 
Meanwhile, I was agreeably astonished at what I 
chose to consider the success of " Bressant," and 
set to work to surpass it in another romance, called 
(for some reason I have forgotten) "Idolatry." 
This unknown book was actually rewritten, in 
whole or in part, no less than seven times. Won 
sum qualis eram. For seven or eight years past I 
have seldom rewritten one of the many pages which 



12 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

circumstances have compelled me to inflict upon 
the world. But the discipline of "Idolatry" prob- 
ably taught me how to clothe an idea in words. 

By the time " Idolatry " was published, the 
year 1874 had come, and I was living in London. 
From my note-books and recollections I compiled 
a series of papers on life in Dresden, under the 
general title of "Saxon Studies." Alexander 
Strahan, then editor of the Contemporary Review, 
printed them in that periodical as fast as I wrote 
them, and they were reproduced in certain eclectic 
magazines in this country, — until I asserted my 
American copyright. Their publication in book 
form was followed by the collapse of both the 
English and the American firm engaging in that 
enterprise. I draw no deductions from that fact : 
I simply state it. The circulation of the " Studies " 
was naturally small ; but one copy fell into the 
hands of a Dresden critic, and the manner in which 
he wrote of it and its author repaid me for the la- 
bor of composition and satisfied me that I had not 
done amiss. 

After " Saxon Studies " I began another novel, 
" Garth," instalments of which appeared from 
month to month in Harper's Magazine. When it 
had run for a year or more, with no signs of abate- 



A PRELIMINARY CONFESSION. 13 

ment, the publishers felt obliged to intimate that 
unless I put an end to their misery they would. 
Accordingly, I promptly gave Garth his quietus. 
The truth is, I was tired of him myself. With all 
his qualities and virtues, he could not help being 
a prig. He found some friends, however, and still 
shows signs of vitality. I wrote no other novel for 
nearly two years, but contributed some sketches 
of English life to Appletons* Journal, and pro- 
duced a couple of novelettes, — " Mrs. Gainsbor- 
ough's Diamonds" and "Archibald Malmaison," 
— which, by reason of their light draught, went 
rather farther than usual. Other short tales, which 
I hardly care to recall, belong to this period. I 
had already ceased to take pleasure in writing for 
its own sake, — partly, no doubt, because I was 
obliged to write for the sake of something else. 
Only those who have no reverence for literature 
should venture to meddle with the making of it, — 
unless, at all events, they can supply the demands 
of the butcher and baker from an independent 
source. 

In 1879, " Sebastian Strome " was published as 
a serial in All the Year Round. Charley Dickens, 
the son of the great novelist, and editor of the 
magazine, used to say to me while the story was 



14 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

in progress, " Keep that red-haired girl up to the 
mark, and the story will do." I took a fancy to 
Mary Dene myself. But I uniformly prefer my 
heroines to my heroes ; perhaps because I invent 
the former out of whole cloth, whereas the latter 
are often formed of shreds and patches of men I 
have met. And I never raised a character to the 
position of hero without recognizing in him, be- 
fore I had done with him, an egregious ass. Differ 
as they may in other respects, they are all breth- 
ren in that ; and yet I am by no means disposed 
to take a Carlylese view of my actual fellow-crea- 
tures. 

I did some hard work at this time : I remember 
once writing for twenty-six consecutive hours 
without pausing or rising from my chair; and 
when, lately, I re-read the story then produced, it 
seemed quite as good as the average of my work 
in that kind. I hasten to add that it has never 
been printed in this country : for that matter, not 
more than half my short tales have found an 
American publisher. "Archibald Malmaison" 
was offered seven years ago to all the leading pub- 
lishers in New York and Boston, and was promptly 
refused by all. Since its recent appearance here, 
however, it has had a circulation larger perhaps 



A PEELIMINAKY C01STFESSI0N. 15 

than that of all my other stories combined. But 
that is one of the accidents that neither author nor 
publisher can foresee. It was the horror of "Ar- 
chibald MalmaisoD," not any literary merit, that 
gave it vogue, — its horror, its strangeness, and its 
brevity. 

On Guy Fawkes's day, 1880, I began " Fortune's 
Fool," — or " Luck," as it was first called, — and 
wrote the first ten of the twelve numbers in three 
months. I used to sit down to my table at eight 
o'clock in the evening and write till sunrise. But 
the two remaining instalments were not written 
and published until 1883, and this delay and its 
circumstances spoiled the. book. In the interval 
between beginning and finishing it another long 
novel — " Dust " — was written and published. I 
returned to America in 1882, after an absence in 
Europe far longer than I had anticipated or de- 
sired. I trust I may never leave my native land 
again for any other on this planet. 

"Beatrix Randolph," "Noble Blood," and "Love 
— or a Name," are the novels which I have writ- 
ten since my return ; and I also published a biog- 
raphy, "Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife." I 
cannot conscientiously say that I have found the 
literary profession — in and for itself — entirely 



16 CONFESSIONS AND CEITICISMS. 

agreeable. Almost everything that I have writ- 
ten has been written from necessity ; and there is 
very little of it that I shall not be glad to see for- 
gotten. The true rewards of literature, for men of 
limited calibre, are the incidental ones, — the val- 
uable friendships and the charming associations 
which it brings about. For the sake of these 
I would willingly endure again many passages 
of a life that has not been all roses ; not that I 
would appear to belittle my own work : it does 
not need it. But the present generation (in 
America at least) does not strike me as containing 
much literary genius. The number of undersized 
persons is large and active, and we hardly believe 
in the possibility of heroic stature. I cannot suffi- 
ciently admire the pains we are at to make our 
work — embodying the aims it does — immacu- 
late in form. Form without idea is nothing, and 
we have no ideas. If one of us were to get an 
idea, it would create its own form, as easily as 
does a flower or a planet. I think we take our- 
selves too seriously : our posterity will not be 
nearly so grave over us. For my part, I do not 
write better than I do, because I have no ideas 
worth better clothes than they can pick up for 
themselves. " Whatever is worth doing at all is 



A PEELIMIKAEY CONFESSION. 17 

worth doing with your best pains," is a saying 
which has injured our literature more than any 
other single thing. How many a lumber-closet 
since the world began has been rilled by the re- 
sults of this purblind and delusive theory ! But 
this is not autobiographical, — save that to have 
written it shows how little prudence my life has 
taught me. 

I remember wondering, in 1871, how anybody 
could write novels. I had produced two or three 
short stories ; but to expand such a thing until it 
should cover two or three hundred pages seemed 
an enterprise far beyond my capacity. Since then, 
I have accomplished the feat only too often ; but 
I doubt whether I have a much clearer idea than 
before of the way it is done ; and I am certain of 
never having done it twice in the same way. The 
manner in which the plant arrives at maturity 
varies according to the circumstances in which 
the seed is planted and cultivated ; and the cul- 
tivator, in this instance at least, is content to 
adapt his action to whatever conditions happen 
to exist. 

While, therefore, it might be easy to formulate 
a cut-and-dried method of procedure, which should 



18 CONFESSIONS AND CEITICISMS. 

be calculated to produce the best results by the 
most efficient means, no such formula would truly 
represent the present writer's actual practice. If I 
ever attempted to map out my successive steps 
beforehand, I never adhered to the forecast or 
reached the anticipated goal. The characters de- 
velop unexpected traits, and these traits become 
the parents of incidents that had not been contem- 
plated. The characters themselves, on the other 
hand, cannot be kept to any preconceived charac- 
teristics; they are, in their turn, modified by the 
exigencies of the plot. 

In two or three cases I have tried to make por- 
traits of real persons whom I have known ; but 
these persons have always been more lifeless than 
the others, and most lifeless in precisely those fea- 
tures that most nearly reproduced life. The best 
results in this direction are realized by those char- 
acters that come to their birth simultaneously with 
the general scheme of the proposed events ; though 
I remember that one of the most lifelike of my 
personages (Madge, in the novel "Garth") was 
not even thought of until the story of whicli she is 
the heroine had been for some time under con- 
sideration. 

Speaking generally, I should suppose that the 



A PRELIMINARY CONFESSION. 19 

best novels are apt to be those that have been long- 
est in the novelist's mind before being committed 
to paper; and the best materials to use, in the 
way of character and scenery, are those that were 
studied not less than seven or eight years previous 
to their reproduction. Thereby is attained that 
quality in a story known as atmosphere or tone, 
perhaps the most valuable and telling quality of 
all. Occasionally, however, in the rare case of a 
story that suddenly seizes upon the writer's imagi- 
nation and despotically "possesses" him, the at- 
mosphere is created by the very strength of the 
"possession." In the former instance, the writer 
is thoroughly master of his subject ; in the latter, 
the subject thoroughly masters him; and both 
amount essentially to the same thing, harmony 
between subject and writer. 

With respect to style, there is little to be said. 
Without a good style, no writer can do much ; but 
it is impossible really to create a good style. A 
writer's style was born at the same time and under 
the same conditions that he himself was. The 
only rule that can be given him is, to say what he 
has to say in the clearest and most direct way, 
using the most fitting and expressive words. But 
often, of course, this advice is like that of the doc- 



20 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

tor who counsels his patient to free his mind from 
all care and worry, to live luxuriously on the fat 
of the land, and to make a voyage round the 
world in a private yacht. The patient has not the 
means of following the prescription. A writer 
may improve a native talent for style; but the 
talent itself he must either have by nature, or for- 
ever go without. And the style that rises to the 
height of genius is like the Phoenix; there is 
hardly ever more than one example of it in an 
age. 

Upon the whole, I conceive that the best way 
of telling how a novel may be written will be to 
trace the steps by which some one novel of mine 
came into existence, and let the reader draw his 
own conclusions from the record. For this pur- 
pose I will select one of the longest of my produc- 
tions, " Fortune's Fool." 

It is so long that, rather than be compelled to 
read it over again, I would write another of equal 
length ; though I hasten to add that neither con- 
tingency is in the least probable. In very few 
men is found the power of sustained conception 
necessary to the successful composition of so pro- 
lix a tale ; and certainly I have never betrayed 
the ownership of such a qualification. The tale, 



A PRELIMINARY CONFESSION. 21 

nevertheless, is an irrevocable fact ; and my pres- 
ent business it is to be its biographer. 

When, in the winter of 1879, the opportunity 
came to write it, the central idea of it had been 
for over a year cooking in my mind. It was orig- 
inally derived from a dream. I saw a man who, 
upon some occasion, caught a glimpse of a woman's 
face. This face was, in his memory, the ideal of 
beauty, purity, and goodness. Through many 
years and vicissitudes he sought it ; it was his re- 
ligion, a human incarnation of divine qualities. 

At certain momentous epochs of his career, he 
had glimpses of it again ; and the effect was al- 
ways to turn him away from the wrong path and 
into the right. At last, near the end of his life, 
he has, for the first time, an opportunity of speak- 
ing to this mortal angel and knowing her ; and 
then he discovers that she is mortal indeed, and 
chargeable with the worst frailties of mortality. 
The moral was that any substitute for a purely 
spiritual religion is fatal, and, sooner or later, re- 
veals its rottenness. 

This seemed good enough for a beginning ; but, 
when I woke up, I was not long in perceiving that 
it would require various modifications before be- 
ing suitable for a novel ; and the first modifica- 



22 CONFESSIONS AND CEITICISMS. 

tions must be in the way of rendering the plot 
plausible. What sort of a man, for example, must 
the hero be to fall into and remain in such an 
error regarding the character of the heroine ? He 
must, I concluded, be a person of great simplicity 
and honesty of character, with a strong tinge of 
ideality and imagination, and with little or no 
education. 

These considerations indicated a person desti- 
tute of known parentage, and growing up more 
or less apart from civilization, but possessing by 
nature an artistic or poetic temperament. Fore- 
glimpses of the further development of the story 
led me to make him the child of a wealthy English 
nobleman, but born in a remote New England vil- 
lage. His artistic proclivities must be inherited 
from his father, who was, therefore, endowed with 
a talent for amateur sketching in oils; which 
talent, again, led him, during his minority, to 
travel on the continent for purposes of artistic 
study. While in Paris, this man, Floyd Vivian, 
meets a young Frenchwoman, whom he secretly 
marries, and with whom he elopes to America. 
Then Vivian receives news of his fathers death, 
compelling him to return to England; and he 
leaves his wife behind him. 



A PRELIMINARY CONFESSION. 23 

A child (Jack, the hero of the story) is born 
during his absence, and the mother dies. Vivian, 
now Lord Castleman, finds reason to believe that 
his wife is dead, but knows nothing of the boy ; 
and he marries again. The boy, therefore, is left 
to grow up in the Maine woods, ignorant of his 
parentage, but with one or two chances of finding 
it out hereafter. So far, so good. 

But now it was necessary to invent a heroine 
for this hero. In order to make the construction 
compact, I made her Jack's cousin, the daughter 
of Lord Vivian's younger brother, who came into 
being for that purpose. This brother (Murdock) 
was a black sheep ; and his daughter, Madeleine, 
was adopted by Lord Vivian, because I now per- 
ceived that Lord Vivian's conscience was going to 
trouble him with regard to his dead wife and her 
possible child, and that he would make a pilgrim- 
age to New England to settle his doubts, taking 
Madeleine with him ; intending, if no child by the 
first marriage were forthcoming, to make Made- 
leine his heir ; for he had no issue by his second 
marriage. This journey would enable Jack and 
Madeleine to meet as children. But it was neces- 
sary that they should have no suspicion of their 
cousinship. Consequently, Lord Vivian, who alone 



24 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

could acquaint them with this fact, must die in the 
very act of learning it himself. And what should 
be the manner of his death ? 

At first, I thought he should be murdered by 
his younger brother; but I afterwards hit upon 
another plan, that seemed less hackneyed and pro- 
vided more interesting issues. Murdock should 
arrive at the Maine village at the same time as 
Lord Vivian, and upon the same errand, to get 
hold of Lord Vivian's son, of whose existence he 
had heard, and whom he wished to get out of the 
way, in order that his own daughter, Madeleine, 
might inherit the property. Murdock should find 
Jack, and Jack, a mere boy, should kill him, 
though not, of course, intentionally, or even con- 
sciously (for which purpose the machinery of the 
Witch's Head was introduced). 

With Mur dock's death, the papers that he car- 
ried, proving Jack's parentage, should disappear, 
to be recovered long afterward, when they were 
needed. Lord Vivian should quietly expire at the 
same time, of heart disease (to which he was forth- 
with made subject), and Madeleine should be left 
temporarily to her own devices. Thus was brought 
about her meeting with Jack in the cave. It was 
their first meeting ; and Jack must remember her 



A PRELIMINARY CONFESSION. 25 

face, so as to recognize her when they meet, years 
later, in England. But, as it was beyond belief that 
the girl's face should resemble the woman's enough 
to make such a recognition possible, I devised the 
miniature portrait of her mother, which Madeleine 
gave to Jack for a keepsake, and which was the 
image of what Madeleine herself should afterward 
become. 

Something more was needed, however, to com- 
plete the situation ; and to meet this exigency, I 
created M. Jacques Malgre*, the grandfather of 
Jack, who had followed his daughter to America, 
in the belief that she had been seduced by Vivian ; 
who had brought up Jack, hating him for his 
father's sake, and loving him for his mother's 
sake ; and who dwelt year after year in the Maine 
village, hoping some day to wreak his vengeance 
upon the seducer. But when M. Malgre and 
Vivian at last meet, this revenge is balked by the 
removal of its supposed motive; Vivian having 
actually married Malgre's daughter, and being 
prepared to make Jack heir of Castlemere. Moral: 
"'Vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord, 4 I will 
repay.' " 

The groundwork of the story was now suffi- 
ciently defined. Madeleine and Jack were born 



26 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

and accounted for. They had met and made 
friends with each other without either knowing 
who the other was ; they were rival claimants for 
the same property, and would hereafter contend 
for it ; still, without identifying each other as the 
little boy and girl that had met by chance in the 
cave so long ago. In the meanwhile, there might 
be personal meetings, in which they should recog- 
nize each other as persons though not by name ; 
and should thus be cementing their friendship as 
man and woman, while, as Jack Vivian and 
Madeleine, they were at open war in the courts 
of law. 

This arrangement would need careful handling 
to render it plausible ; but it could be done. I am 
now of opinion, however, that I should have done 
well to have given up the whole fundamental idea 
of the story, as suggested by the dream. The 
dream had done its office when it had provided me 
with characters and materials for a more probable 
and less abstruse and difficult plot. All further 
dependence upon it should then have been relin- 
quished, and the story allowed to work out its 
own natural and unforced conclusion. But it is 
easy to be wise after the event ; and the event, at 
this time, was still in the future. 



A PRELIMINARY CONFESSION. 27 

As Madeleine was to be the opposite of the sin- 
less, ideal woman that Jack was to imagine her to 
be, it was necessary to subject her to some evil 
influence ; and this influence was embodied in the 
form of Bryan Sinclair, who, though an after- 
thought, came to be the most powerful figure in 
the story. But, before he would bring himself to 
bear upon her, she must have reached womanhood; 
and I also perceived that Jack must become a 
man before the action of the story, as between him 
and Madeleine, could continue. An interval of 
ten or fifteen years must therefore occur ; and this 
was arranged by sending Jack into the western 
wilderness of California, and fixing the period as 
just preceding the date of the California gold fever 
of '49. 

Jack and Bryan were to be rivals for Madeleine ; 
but artistic considerations seemed to require that 
they should first meet and become friends much 
in the same way that Jack and Madeleine had 
done. So I sent Bryan to California, and made 
him the original discoverer of the precious 
metal there ; brought him and Jack together ; 
and finally sent them to England in each other's 
company. Jack, of course, as yet knows nothing 
of his origin, and appears in London society 



28 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

merely as a natural genius and a sculptor of wild 
animals. 

By this time, I had begun to make Madeleine's 
acquaintance, and, in consequence, to doubt the 
possibility of her becoming wholly evil, even under 
the influence of Bryan Sinclair. There would be 
a constant struggle between them ; she would love 
him, but would not yield to him, though her life 
and happiness would be compromised by his 
means. He, on the other hand, would love her, 
and he would make some effort to be worthy of 
her ; but his other crimes would weigh him down, 
until, at the moment when the battle cost her her 
life, he should be destroyed by the incarnation of 
his own wickedness, in the shape of Tom Berne. 

This was not the issue that I had originally de- 
signed, and, whether better or worse than that, 
did not harmonize with what had gone before. 
The story lacked wholeness and continuous vital- 
ity. As a work of art, it was a failure. But I 
did not realize this fact until it was too late, and 
probably should not have known how to mend 
matters had it been otherwise. One of the dan- 
gers against which a writer has especially to guard 
is that of losing his sense of proportion in the 
conduct of a story. An episode that has little 



A PRELIMINARY CONFESSION. 29 

relative importance maybe allowed undue weight, 
because it seems interesting intrinsically, or be- 
cause he has expended special pains upon it. It 
is only long afterward, when he has become cool 
and impartial, if not indifferent or disgusted, that 
he can see clearly where the faults of construction 
lie. 

I need not go further into the details of the 
story. Enough has been said to give a clew to 
what might remain to say. I began to write it in 
the winter of 1879-80, in London; and, in order to 
avoid noise and interruption, it was my custom to 
begin writing at eight in the evening, and con- 
tinue at work until six or seven o'clock the next 
morning. In three months I had written as far as 
the 393d page, in the American edition. The re- 
maining seventy pages were not completed, in 
their published form, until about three years later, 
an extraordinary delay, which did not escape cen- 
sure at the time, and into the causes of which I 
will not enter here. 

The title of the story also underwent various 
vicissitudes. The one first chosen was "Happy 
Jack "; but that was objected to as suggesting, to 
an English ear at least, a species of cheap Jack or 
rambling peddler. The next title fixed upon was 



30 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

"Luck"; but before this could be copyrighted, 
somebody published a story called "Luck, and 
What Came of It," and thereby invalidated my 
briefer version. For several weeks, I was at a loss 
what to call it ; but one evening, at a representa- 
tion of " Romeo and Juliet," I heard the exclama- 
tion of Borneo, " Oh, I am fortune's fool ! " and 
immediately appropriated it to my own needs. It 
suited the book well enough, in more ways than 
one. 



CHAPTER II. 

NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 

The novel of our times is susceptible of many 
definitions. The American publishers of Railway- 
libraries think that it is forty or fifty double- 
column pages of pirated English fiction. Readers 
of the "New York Ledger" suppose it to be a 
romance of angelic virtue at last triumphant over 
satanic villany. The aristocracy of culture de- 
scribe it as a philosophic analysis of human char- 
acter and motives, with an agnostic bias on the 
analyst's part. Schoolboys are under the impres- 
sion that it is a tale of Western chivalry and In- 
dian outrage — price, ten cents. Most of us agree 
in the belief that it should contain a brace or two 
of lovers, a suspense, and a solution. 

To investigate the nature of the novel in the 
abstract would involve going back to the very 
origin of things. It would imply the recognition 
of a certain faculty of the mind, known as imagi- 
nation ; and of a certain fact in history, called art. 

31 



32 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

Art and imagination are correlatives, — one im- 
plies the other. Together, they may be said to 
constitute the characteristic badge and vindication 
of human nature; imagination is the badge, and 
art is the vindication. Reason, which gets so much 
vulgar glorification, is, after all, a secondary qual- 
ity. It is posterior to imagination, — it is one of 
the means by which imagination seeks to realize 
its ends. Some animals reason, or seem to do so : 
but the most cultivated ape or donkey has not yet 
composed a sonnet, or a symphony, or "an ar- 
rangement in green and yellow." Man still re- 
tains a few prerogatives, although, like ^Esop's 
stag, which despised the legs that bore it away 
from the hounds, and extolled the antlers that 
entangled it in the thicket, — so man often mag- 
nifies those elements of his nature that least de- 
serve it. 

But, before celebrating art and imagination, we 
should have a clear idea what those handsome 
terms mean. In the broadest sense, imagination 
is the cause of the effect we call progress. It 
marks all forms of human effort towards a better 
state of things. It embraces a perception of exist- 
ing shortcomings, and an aspiration towards a 
loftier ideal. It is, in fact, a truly divine force 



NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 33 

in man, reminding him of his heavenly origin, and 
stimulating him to rise again to the level whence 
he fell. For it has glimpses of the divine Image 
within or behind the material veil ; and its con- 
stant impulse is to tear aside the veil and grasp 
the image. The world, let us say, is a gross and 
finite translation of an infinite and perfect Word; 
and imagination is the intuition of that perfection, 
born in the human heart, and destined forever to 
draw mankind into closer harmony with it. 

In common speech, however, imagination is de- 
prived of this broader significance, and is restricted 
to its relations with art. Art is not progress, 
though progress implies art. It differs from pro- 
gress chiefly in disclaiming the practical element. 
You cannot apply a poem, a picture, or a strain of 
music, to material necessities ; they are not food, 
clothing, or shelter. Only after these physical 
wants are assuaged, does art supervene. Its sphere 
is exclusively mental and moral. But this defini- 
tion is not adequate; a further distinction is 
needed. For such things as mathematics, moral 
philosophy, and political economy also belong to 
the mental sphere, and yet they are not art. But 
these, though not actually existing on the plane 
of material necessities, yet do exist solely in order 



34 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

to relieve such necessities. Unlike beauty, they 
are not their own excuse for being. Their em- 
bodiment is utilitarian, that of art is aesthetic. 
Political economy, for example, shows me how to 
buy two drinks for the same price I used to pay 
for one ; while art inspires me to transmute a 
pewter mug into a Cellini goblet. My physical 
nature, perhaps, prefers two drinks to one ; but, if 
my taste be educated, and I be not too thirsty, I 
would rather drink once from the Cellini goblet 
than twice from the mug. Political economy 
gravitates towards the material level; art seeks 
incarnation only in order to stimulate anew the 
same spiritual faculties that generated it. Art is 
the production, by means of appearances, of the 
illusion of a loftier reality ; and imagination is the 
faculty which holds that loftier reality up for imi- 
tation. 

The disposition of these preliminaries brings us 
once more in sight of the goal of our pilgrimage. 
The novel, despite its name, is no new thing, but 
an old friend in a modern dress. Ever since the 
time of Cadmus, — ever since language began to 
express thought as well as emotion, — men have 
betrayed the impulse to utter in forms of literary 
art, — in poetry and story, — their conceptions of 



NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 35 

the world around them. According to many phil- 
ologists, poetry was the original form of human 
speech. Be that as it may, whatever flows into 
the mind, from the spectacle of nature and of 
mankind, that influx the mind tends instinctively 
to reproduce, in a shape accordant with its pecul- 
iar bias and genius. And those minds in which 
imagination is predominant, impart to their repro- 
ductions a balance and beauty which stamp them 
as art. Art — and literary art especially — is 
the only evidence we have that this universal 
frame of things has relation to our minds, and is a 
universe and not a poliverse. Outside revelation, 
it is our best assurance of an intelligent purpose 
in creation. 

Novels, then, instead of being (as some persons 
have supposed) a wilful and corrupt conspiracy 
on the part of the evilly disposed, against the peace 
and prosperity of the realm, may claim a most an- 
cient and indefeasible right to existence. They, 
with their ancestors and near relatives, constitute 
Literature, — without which the human race would 
be little better than savages. For the effect of 
pure literature upon a receptive mind is some- 
thing more than can be definitely stated. Like 
sunshine upon a landscape, it is a kind of miracle. 



36 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

It demands from its disciple almost as much, as it 
gives him, and is never revealed save to the disin- 
terested and loving eye. In our best moments, it 
touches us most deeply ; and when the sentiment 
of human brotherhood kindles most warmly within 
us, we discover in literature an exquisite answer- 
ing ardor. "When everything that can be, has been 
said about a true work of art, its finest charm re- 
mains, — the charm derived from a source beyond 
the conscious reach even of the artist. 

The novel, then, must be pure literature; as 
much so as the poem. But poetry — now that the 
day of the broad Homeric epic is past, or tempo- 
rarily eclipsed — appeals to a taste too exclusive 
and abstracted for the demands of modern readers. 
Its most accommodating metre fails to house our 
endless variety of mood and movement; it exacts 
from the student an exaltation above the custom- 
ary level of thought and sentiment greater than he 
can readily afford. The poet of old used to clothe 
in the garb of verse his every observation on life 
and nature ; but to-day he reserves for it only his 
most ideal and abstract conceptions. The merit of 
Cervantes is not so much that he laughed Spain's 
chivalry away, as that he heralded the modern 
novel of character and manners. It is the latest, 



NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 37 

most pliable, most catholic solution of the old 
problem, — how to unfold man to himself. It im- 
proves on the old methods, while missing little of 
their excellence. No one can read a great novel 
without feeling that, from its outwardly prosaic 
pages, strains of genuine poetry have ever and 
anon reached his ears. It does not obtrude itself ; 
it is not there for him who has not skill to listen 
for it: but for him who has ears, it is like the 
music of a bird, defining itself amidst the innu- 
merable murmurs of the forest. 

So, the ideal novel, conforming in every part to 
the behests of the imagination, should produce, by 
means of literary art, the illusion of a loftier real- 
ity. This excludes the photographic method of 
novel- writing. "That is a false effort in art," 
says Goethe, towards the close of his long and 
splendid career, "which, in giving reality to the 
appearance, goes so far as to leave in it nothing 
but the common, every-day actual." It is neither 
the actual, nor Chinese copies of the actual, that 
we demand of art. Were art merely the purveyor 
of such things, she might yield her crown to the 
camera and the stenographer ; and divine imagina- 
tion would degenerate into vulgar inventiveness. 
Imagination is incompatible with inventiveness, or 



38 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

imitation. Imitation is death, imagination is life. 
Imitation is servitude, imagination is royalty. He 
who claims the name of artist must rise to that 
vision of a loftier reality — a more true because a 
more beautiful world — which only imagination 
can reveal. A truer world, — for the world of 
facts is not and cannot be true. It is barren, in- 
coherent, misleading. But behind every fact there 
is a truth : and these truths are enlightening, uni- 
fying, creative. Fasten your hold upon them, and 
facts will become your servants instead of your 
tyrants. No charm of detail will be lost, no home- 
ly picturesque circumstance, no touch of human 
pathos or humor; but all hardness, rigidity, and 
finality will disappear, and your story will be not 
yours alone,, but that of every one who feels and 
thinks. Spirit gives universality and meaning; 
but alas ! for this new gospel of the auctioneer's 
catalogue, and the crackling of thorns under a 
pot. He who deals with facts only, deprives his 
work of gradation and distinction. One fact, con- 
sidered in itself, has no less importance than any 
other ; a lump of charcoal is as valuable as a dia- 
mond. But that is the philosophy of brute beasts 
and Digger Indians. A child, digging on *the 
beach, may shape a heap of sand into a similitude 



NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 39 

of Vesuvius ; but is it nothing that Vesuvius tow- 
ers above the clouds, and overwhelms Pompeii ? 

In proceeding from the general to the particular, 
— to the novel as it actually exists in England and 
America, — attention will be confined strictly to 
the contemporary outlook. The new generation 
of novelists (by which is intended not those merely 
living in this age, but those who actively belong 
to it) differ in at least one fundamental respect 
from the later representatives of the generation 
preceding them. Thackeray and Dickens did not 
deliberately concern themselves about a philoso- 
phy of life. With more or less complacency, 
more or less cynicism, they accepted the religious 
and social canons which had grown to be the 
commonplace of the first half of this century. 
They pictured men and women, not as affected by 
questions, but as affected by one another. The 
morality and immorality of their personages were 
of the old familiar Church-of-England sort ; there 
was no speculation as to whether what had been 
supposed to be wrong was really right, and vice 
versd. Such speculations, in various forms and 
degrees of energy, appear in the world periodi- 
cally; but the public conscience during the last 



40 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

thirty or forty years had been gradually making 
itself comfortable after the disturbances conse- 
quent upon the French Revolution ; the theoretical 
rights of man had been settled for the moment ; 
and interest was directed no longer to the asser- 
tion and support of these rights, but to the social 
condition and character which were their out- 
come. Good people were those who climbed 
through reverses and sorrows towards the conven- 
tional heaven; bad people were those who, in 
spite of worldly and temporary successes and tri- 
umphs, gravitated towards the conventional hell. 
Novels designed on this basis in so far filled the 
bill, as the phrase is : their greater or less excel- 
lence depended solely on the veracity with which 
the aspect, the temperament, and the conduct of 
the dramatis personoe were reported, and upon the 
amount of ingenuity wherewith the web of events 
and circumstances was woven, and the conclusion 
reached. Nothing more was expected, and, in gen- 
eral, little or nothing more was attempted. Little 
more, certainly, will be found in the writings 
of Thackeray or of Balzac, who, it is commonly 
admitted, approach nearest to perfection of any 
novelists of their time. There was nothing gen- 
uine or commanding in the metaphysical dilettan- 



NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 41 

teisra of Bulwer : the philosophical speculations of 
Georges Sand are the least permanently interest- 
ing feature of her writings ; and the same might in 
some measure be affirmed of George Eliot, whose 
gloomy wisdom finally confesses its inability to do 
more than advise us rather to bear those ills we 
have than fly to others that we know not of. As 
to Nathaniel Hawthorne, he cannot properly be in- 
stanced in this connection ; for he analyzed chiefly 
those parts of human nature which remain substan- 
tially unaltered in the face of whatever changes of 
opinion, civilization, and religion. The truth that 
he brings to light is not the sensational fact of a 
fashion or a period, but a verity of the human 
heart, which may foretell, but can never be affected 
by, anything which that heart may conceive. In 
other words, Hawthorne belonged neither to this 
nor to any other generation of writers further 
than that his productions may be used as a test 
of the inner veracity of all the rest. 

But of late years a new order of things has been 
coming into vogue, and the new novelists have 
been among the first to reflect it ; and of these the 
Americans have shown themselves among the 
most susceptible. Science, or the investigation of 
the phenomena of existence (in opposition to phil- 



42 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

osophy, the investigation of the phenomena of 
being), has proved nature to be so orderly and 
self-sufficient, and inquiry as to the origin of the 
primordial atom so unproductive and quixotic, as 
to make it convenient and indeed reasonable to 
accept nature as a self-existing fact, and to let all 
the rest — if rest there be — go. From this point 
of view, God and a future life retire into the back- 
ground; not as finally disproved, — because denial, 
like affirmation, must, in order to be final, be logi- 
cally supported ; and spirit is, if not illogical, at 
any rate outside the domain of logic, — but as being 
a hopelessly vague and untrustworthy hypothesis. 
The Bible is a human book ; Christ was a gentle- 
man, related to the Buddha and Plato families ; 
Joseph was an ill-used man ; death, so far as we 
have any reason to believe, is annihilation of per- 
sonal existence ; life is — the predicament of the 
body previous to death ; morality is the enlight- 
ened selfishness of the greatest number ; civiliza- 
tion is the compromises men make with one another 
in order to get the most they can out of the world ; 
wisdom is acknowledgment of these propositions ; 
folly is to hanker after what may lie beyond the 
sphere of sense. The supporter of these doctrines 
by no means permits himself to be regarded as a 



NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 43 

rampant and dogmatic atheist ; lie is simply the 
modest and humble doubter of what he cannot 
prove. He even recognizes the persistence of the 
religious instinct in man, and caters to it by a 
new religion suited to the times — the Religion of 
Humanity. Thus he is secure at all points : for if 
the religion of the Bible turn out to be true, his 
disappointment will be an agreeable one ; and if it 
turns out false, he will not be disappointed at all. 
He is an agnostic — a person bound to be com- 
placent whatever happens. He may indulge a 
gentle regret, a musing sadness, a smiling pensive- 
ness ; but he will never refuse a comfortable din- 
ner, and always wear something soft next his skin, 
nor can he altogether avoid the consciousness of 
his intellectual superiority. 

Agnosticism, which reaches forward into nihil- 
ism on one side, and extends back into liberal 
Christianity on the other, marks, at all events, a 
definite turning-point from what has been to what 
is to come. The human mind, in the course of 
its long journey, is passing through a dark place, 
and is, as it were, whistling to keep up its cour- 
age. / It is a period of doubt : what it will result 
in remains to be seen ; but analogy leads us to 
infer that this doubt, like all others, will be sue- 



44 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

ceeded by a comparatively definite belief in some- 
thing — no matter what. It is a transient state 
— the interval between one creed and another. 
The agnostic no longer holds to what is behind 
him, nor knows what lies before, so he contents 
himself with feeling the ground beneath his feet. 
That, at least, though the heavens fall, is likely 
to remain ; meanwhile, let the heavens take care 
of themselves. It may be the part of valor to 
champion divine revelation, but the better part 
of valor is discretion, and if divine revelation 
prove true, discretion will be none the worse off. 
On the other hand, to champion a myth is to 
make one's self ridiculous, and of being ridicu- 
lous the agnostic has a consuming fear. From 
the superhuman disinterestedness of the theory 
of the Religion of Humanity, before which angels 
might quail, he flinches not, but when it comes to 
the risk of being laughed at by certain sagacious 
persons he confesses that bravery has its limits. 
He dares do all that may become an agnostic, — 
who dares do more is none. 

But, however open to criticism this phase of 
thought may be, it is a genuine phase, and the 
proof is the alarm and the shifts that it has 
brought about in the opposite camp. "Estab- 



NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 45 

lished" religion finds the foundation of her es- 
tablishment undermined, and, like the lady in 
Hamlet's play, she doth protest too much. In 
another place, all manner of odd superstitions 
and quasi-miracles are cropping up and gaining 
credence, as if, since the immortality of the soul 
cannot be proved by logic, it should be smuggled 
into belief by fraud and violence — that is, by 
the testimony of the bodily senses themselves. 
Taking a comprehensive view of the whole field, 
therefore, it seems to be divided between discreet 
and supercilious skepticism on one side, and, on 
the other, the clamorous jugglery of charlatanism. 
The case is not really so bad as that : nihilists are 
not discreet and even the Bishop of Eome is not 
necessarily a charlatan. Nevertheless, the out- 
look may fairly be described as confused and the 
issue uncertain. And — to come without further 
preface to the subject of this paper — it is with 
this material that the modern novelist, so far as 
he is a modern and not a future novelist, or a 
novelist temporis acti, has to work. Unless a 
man have the gift to forecast the years, or, at 
least, to catch the first ray of the coming light, 
he can hardly do better than attend to what is 
under his nose. He may hesitate to identify him- 



46 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

self with agnosticism, but he can scarcely avoid 
discussing it, either in itself or in its effects. He 
must entertain its problems ; and the personages 
of his story, if they do not directly advocate or 
oppose agnostic views, must show in their lives 
either confirmation or disproof of agnostic prin- 
ciples. It is impossible, save at the cost of affec- 
tation or of ignorance, to escape from the spirit 
of the age. It is in the air we breathe, and, 
whether we are fully conscious thereof or not, 
our lives and thoughts must needs be tinctured 
by it. 

Now, art is creative; but Mephistopheles, the 
spirit that denies, is destructive. A negative atti- 
tude of mind is not favorable for the production 
of works of art. The best periods of art have also 
been periods of spiritual or philosophical convic- 
tions. The more a man doubts, the more he disin- 
tegrates and the less he constructs. He has in 
him no central initial certainty round which all 
other matters of knowledge or investigation may 
group themselves in symmetrical relation. He may 
analyze to his heart's content, but must be wary 
of organizing. If creation is not of God, if nature 
is not the expression of the contact between an 
infinite and a finite being, then the universe and 



NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 47 

everything in it are accidents, which might have 
been otherwise or might have not been at all; 
there is no design in them nor purpose, no divine 
and eternal significance. This being conceded, 
what meaning would there be in designing works 
of art ? If art has not its prototype in creation, if 
all that we see and do is chance, uninspired by a 
controlling and forming intelligence behind or 
within it, then to construct a work of art would 
be to make something arbitrary and grotesque, 
something unreal and fugitive, something out of 
accord with the general sense (or nonsense) of 
things, something with no further basis or warrant 
than is supplied by the maker's idle and irrespon- 
sible fancy. But since no man cares to expend 
the trained energies of his mind upon the manu- 
facture of toys, it will come to pass (upon the 
accidental hypothesis of creation) that artists will 
become shy of justifying their own title. They 
will adopt the scientific method of merely collect- 
ing and describing phenomena; but the phe- 
nomena will no longer be arranged as parts or 
developments of a central controlling idea, be- 
cause such an arrangement would no longer seem 
to be founded on the truth: the gratification 
which it gives to the mind would be deemed illu- 



48 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

sory, the result of tradition and prejudice; or, in 
other words, what is true being found no longer 
consistent with what we have been accustomed to 
call beauty, the latter would cease to be an object 
of desire, though something widely alien to it 
might usurp its name. If beauty be devoid of 
independent right to be, and definable only as an 
attribute of truth, then undoubtedly the cynosure 
to-day may be the scarecrow of to-morrow, and 
vice versd, according to our varying conception of 
what truth is. 

And, as a matter of fact, art already shows the 
effects of the agnostic influence. Artists have be- 
gun to doubt whether their old conceptions of 
beauty be not fanciful and silly. They betray a 
tendency to eschew the loftier flights of the imag- 
ination, and confine themselves to what they call 
facts. Critics deprecate idealism as something fit 
only for children, and extol the courage of seeing 
and representing things as they are. Sculpture is 
either a stern student of modern trousers and 
coat-tails or a vapid imitator of classic prototypes. 
Painters try all manner of experiments, and shrink 
from painting beneath the surface of their canvas. 
Much of recent effort in the different branches of 
art comes to us in the form of " studies," but the 



NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 49 

complete work still delays to be born. We would 
not so much mind having our old idols and crite- 
rions done away with, were something new and 
better, or as good, substituted for them. But ap- 
parently nothing definite has yet been decided on. 
Doubt still reigns, and, once more, doubt is not 
creative. One of two things must presently hap- 
pen. The time will come when we must stop 
saying that we do not know whether or not God, 
and all that God implies, exists, and affirm defi- 
nitely and finally either that he does not exist or 
that he does. That settled, we shall soon see 
what will become of art. If there is a God, he 
will be understood and worshipped, not super- 
stitiously and literally as heretofore, but in a new 
and enlightened spirit ; and an art will arise com- 
mensurate with this new and loftier revelation. 
If there is no God, it is difficult to see how art can 
have the face to show herself any more. There is 
no place for her in the Religion of Humanity ; to 
be true and living she can be nothing which it has 
thus far entered into the heart of man to call 
beautiful ; and she could only serve to remind us 
of certain vague longings and aspirations now 
proved to be as false as they were vain. Art is 
not an orchid : it cannot grow in the air. Unless 



50 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

its root can be traced as deep down as Yggdrasil, 
it will wither and vanish, and be forgotten as it 
ought to be ; and as for the cowslip by the river's 
brim, a yellow cowslip it shall be, and nothing 
more ; and the light that never was on sea or land 
shall be permanently extinguished, in the interests 
of common sense and economy, and (what is least 
inviting of all to the unregenerate mind) we shall 
speedily get rid of the notion that we have lost 
anything worth preserving. 

This, however, is only what may be, and our 
concern at present is with things as they are. It 
has been observed that American writers have 
shown themselves more susceptible of the new in- 
fluences than most others, partly no doubt from a 
natural sensitiveness of organization, but in some 
measure also because there are with us no ruts 
and fetters of old tradition from which we must 
emancipate ourselves before adopting anything 
new. We have no past, in the European sense, 
and so are ready for whatever the present or the 
future may have to suggest. Nevertheless, the 
novelist who, in a larger degree than any other, 
seems to be the literary parent of our own best 
men of fiction, is himself not an American, nor 
even an Englishman, but a Russian — Turgue- 



NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 51 

niefL His series of extraordinary novels, trans- 
lated into English and French, is altogether the 
most important fact in the literature of fiction of 
the last twelve years. To read his books you 
would scarcely imagine that their author could 
have had any knowledge of the work of his prede- 
cessors in the same field. Originality is a term 
indiscriminately applied, and generally of trifling 
significance, but so far as any writer may be orig- 
inal, Turgue'nieff is so. He is no less original in 
the general scheme and treatment of his stories 
than in their details. Whatever he produces has 
the air of being the outcome of his personal expe- 
rience and observation. He even describes his 
characters, their aspect, features, and ruling traits, 
in a novel and memorable manner. He seizes on 
them from a new point of vantage, and uses 
scarcely any of the hackneyed and conventional 
devices for bringing his portraits before our 
minds ; yet no writer, not even Carlyle, has been 
more vivid, graphic, and illuminating than he. 
Here are eyes that owe nothing to other eyes, but 
examine and record for themselves. Having once 
taken up a character he never loses his grasp on 
it : on the contrary, he masters it more and more, 
and only lets go of it when the last recesses of its 



52 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

organism have been explored. In the quality and 
conduct of his plots he is equally unprecedented. 
His scenes are modern, and embody characteristic 
events and problems in the recent history of Rus- 
sia. There is in their arrangement no attempt at 
symmetry, nor poetic justice. Temperament and 
circumstances are made to rule, and against their 
merciless fiat no appeal is allowed. Evil does evil 
to the end; weakness never gathers strength; 
even goodness never varies from its level : it suf- 
fers, but is not corrupted ; it is the goodness of 
instinct, not of struggle and aspiration; it hap- 
pens to belong to this or that person, just as his 
hair happens to be black or brown. Everything 
in the surroundings and the action is to the last 
degree matter-of-fact, commonplace, inevitable ; 
there are no picturesque coincidences, no provi- 
dential interferences, no desperate victories over 
fate ; the tale, like the world of the materialist, 
moves onward from a predetermined beginning to 
a helpless and tragic close. And yet few books 
have been written of deeper and more permanent 
fascination than these. Their grim veracity ; the 
creative sympathy and steady dispassionateness of 
their portrayal of mankind; their constancy of 
motive, and their sombre earnestness, have been 



NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 53 

surpassed by none. This earnestness is worth 
dwelling upon for a moment. It bears no likeness 
to the dogmatism of the bigot or the fanaticism 
of the enthusiast. It is the concentration of a 
broadly gifted masculine mind, devoting its un- 
stinted energies to depicting certain aspects of 
society and civilization, which are powerfully rep- 
resentative of the tendencies of the day. " Here 
is the unvarnished fact — give heed to it! " is the 
unwritten motto. .The author avoids betraying, 
either explicitly or implicitly, the tendency of his 
own sympathies ; not because he fears to have 
them known, but because he holds it to be his 
office simply to portray, and to leave judgment 
thereupon where, in any case, it must ultimately 
rest — with the world of his readers. He tells us 
what is ; it is for us to consider whether it also 
must be and shall be. Turguenieff is an artist by 
nature, yet his books are not intentionally works 
of art; they are fragments of history, differing 
from real life only in presenting such persons and 
events as are commandingly and exhaustively 
typical, and excluding all others. This faculty of 
selection is one of the highest artistic faculties, 
and it appears as much in the minor as in the 
major features of the narrative. It indicates that 



54 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

Turguenieff might, if he chose, produce a story as 
faultlessly symmetrical as was ever framed. Why, 
then, does he not so choose? The reason can only 
be that he deems the truth-seeming of his narra- 
tive would thereby be impaired. " He is only 
telling a story," the reader would say, "and he 
shapes the events and persons so as to fit the 
plot." But is this reason reasonable ? To those 
who believe that God has no hand in the ordering 
of human affairs, it undoubtedly is reasonable. 
To those who believe the contrary, however, it 
appears as if the story of no human life or com- 
plex of lives could be otherwise than a rounded 
and perfect work of art — provided only that the 
spectator takes note, not merely of the superficial 
accidents and appearances, but also of the under- 
lying divine purpose and significance. The ab- 
sence of this recognition in Turguenieff 's novels 
is the explanation of them : holding the creed 
their author does, he could not have written them 
otherwise ; and, on the other hand, had his creed 
been different, he very likely would not have writ- 
ten novels at all. 

The pioneer, in whatever field of thought or ac- 
tivity, is apt to be also the most distinguished fig- 
ure therein. The consciousness of being the first 



NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 55 

augments the keenness of his impressions, and a 
mind that can see and report in advance of others 
a new order of things may claim a finer organiza- 
tion than the ordinary. The vitality of nature 
animates him who has insight to discern her at 
first hand, whereas his followers miss the fresh- 
ness of the morning, because, instead of discover- 
ing, they must be content to illustrate and refine. 
Those of our writers who betray Turguenieff's 
influence are possibly his superiors in finish and 
culture, but their faculty of convincing and pre- 
senting is less. Their interest in their own work 
seems less serious than his ; they may entertain 
us more, but they do not move and magnetize so 
much. The persons and events of their stories 
are conscientiously studied, and are nothing if not 
natural; but they lack distinction. In an epitome 
of life so concise as the longest novel must needs 
be, to use any but types is waste of time and 
space. A typical character is one who combines 
the traits or beliefs of a certain class to which he 
is affiliated — who is, practically, all of them and 
himself besides; and, when we know him, there 
is nothing left worth knowing about the others. 
In Shakespeare's Hamlet and Enobarbus, in 
Fielding's Squire Western, in Walter Scott's 



56 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

Edie Ochiltree and Meg Merrilies, in Balzac's 
Pere Goriot and Madame Marneff, in Thackeray's 
Colonel Newcome and Becky Sharp, in Turgue- 
niefFs Bazarof and Dimitri Roudine, we meet 
persons who exhaust for us the groups to which 
they severally belong. Bazarof, the nihilist, for 
instance, reveals to us the motives and influences 
that have made nihilism, so that we feel that noth- 
ing essential on that score remains to be learnt. 

The ability to recognize and select types is a 
test of a novelist's talent and experience. It 
implies energy to rise above the blind walls of 
one's private circle of acquaintance ; the power 
to perceive what phases of thought and existence 
are to be represented as well as who represents 
them ; the sagacity to analyze the age or the 
moment and reproduce its dominant features. 
The feat is difficult, and, when done, by no means 
blows its own trumpet. On ' the contrary, the 
reader must open his eyes to be aware of it. 
He finds the story clear and easy of comprehen- 
sion ; the characters come home to him familiarly 
and remain distinctly in his memory; he under- 
stands something which was, till now, vague to 
him: but he is as likely to ascribe this to an 
exceptional lucidity in his own mental condition 



NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 57 

as to any special merit in the author. Indeed, 
it often happens that the author who puts out-of- 
the-way personages into his stories — characters 
that represent nothing but themselves, or pos- 
sibly some eccentricity of invention on their 
author's part, will gain the latter a reputation 
for cleverness higher than his fellow's who por- 
trays mankind in its masses as well as in its de- 
tails. But the finest imagination is not that 
which evolves strange images, but that which 
explains seeming contradictions, and reveals the 
unity within the difference and the harmony 
beneath the discord. 

Were we to compare our fictitious literature, 
as a whole, with that of England, the balance 
must be immeasurably on the English side. Even 
confining ourselves to to-day, and to the prospect 
of to-morrow, it must be conceded that, in settled 
method, in guiding tradition, in training and 
associations both personal and inherited, the aver- 
age English novelist is better circumstanced than 
the American. Nevertheless, the English novel- 
ist is not at present writing better novels than 
the American. The reason seems to be that he 
uses no material which has not been in use for 
hundreds of years ; and to say that such material 



58 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

begins to lose its freshness is not putting the case 
too strongly. He has not been able to detach 
himself from the paralyzing background of Eng- 
lish conventionality. The vein was rich, but it 
is worn out ; and the half-dozen pioneers had all 
the luck. 

There is no commanding individual imagination 
in England — nor, to say the truth, does there 
seem to be any in America. But we have what 
they have not — a national imaginative tendency. 
There are no fetters upon our fancy; and, how- 
ever deeply our real estate may be mortgaged, 
there is freedom for our ideas. England has not 
yet appreciated the true inwardness of a favorite 
phrase of ours, — a new deal. And yet she is 
tired to death of her own stale stories ; and 
when, by chance, any one of her writers happens 
to chirp out a note a shade different from the 
prevailing key, the whole nation pounces down 
upon him, with a shriek of half-incredulous joy, 
and buys him up, at the rate of a million copies 
a year. Our own best writers are more read in 
England, or, at any rate, more talked about, than 
their native crop ; not so much, perhaps, because 
they are different as because their difference is 
felt to be of a significant and typical kind. It 



NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 59 

has in it a gleam of the new day. They are 
realistic ; but realism, so far as it involves a faith- 
ful study of nature, is useful. The illusion of 
a loftier reality, at which we should aim, must 
be evolved from adequate knowledge of reality 
itself. The spontaneous and assured faith, which 
is the mainspring of sane imagination, must be 
preceded by the doubt and rejection of what is 
lifeless and insincere. We desire no resurrection 
of the Ann RadclyfTe type of romance : but the 
true alternative to this is not such a mixture of 
the police gazette and the medical reporter as 
Emile Zola offers us. So far as Zola is conscien- 
tious, let him live ; but, in so far as he is revolt- 
ing, let him die. Many things in the world seem 
ugly and purposeless; but to a deeper intelli- 
gence than* ours, they are a part of beauty and 
design. What is ugly and irrelevant, can never 
enter, as such, into a work of art; because the 
artist is bound, by a sacred obligation, to show 
us the complete curve only, — never the undevel- 
oped fragments. 

But were the firmament of England still illu- 
minated with her Dickenses, her Thackerays, 
and her Brontes, I should still hold our state to 
be fuller of promise than hers. It may be ad- 



60 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

mitted that almost everything was against our 
producing anything good in literature. Our men, 
in the first place, had to write for nothing; be- 
cause the publisher, who can steal a readable 
English novel, will not pay for an American 
novel, for the mere patriotic gratification of ena- 
bling its American author to write it. In the 
second place, they had nothing to write about, 
for the national life was too crude and hetero- 
geneous for ordinary artistic purposes. Thirdly, 
they had no one to write for : because, although, 
in one sense, there might be readers enough, in a 
higher sense there wer*e scarcely any, — that is to 
say, there was no organized critical body of liter- 
ary opinion, from which an author could confi- 
dently look to receive his just meed of encourage- 
ment and praise. Yet, in spite of all this, and not 
to mention honored names that have ceased or are 
ceasing to cast their living weight into the scale, 
we are contributing much that is fresh and orig- 
inal, and something, it may be, that is of perma- 
nent value, to literature. We have accepted the 
situation ; and, since no straw has been vouch- 
safed us to make our bricks with, we are trying 
manfully to make them without. 

It will not be necessary, however, to call 



NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 61 

the roll of all the able and popular gentle- 
men who are contending in the forlorn hope 
against disheartening odds ; and as for the ladies 
who have honored our literature by their con- 
tributions, it will perhaps be well to adopt 
regarding them a course analogous to that which 
Napoleon is said to have pursued with the letters 
sent to him while in Italy. He left them 
unread until a certain time had elapsed, and 
then found that most of them no longer needed 
attention. We are thus brought face to face with 
the two men with whom every critic of American 
novelists has to reckon ; ' who represent what is 
carefullest and newest in American fiction ; and 
it remains to inquire how far their work has been 
moulded by the skeptical or radical spirit of which 
Turgue'nieff: is the chief exemplar. 

The author of "Daisy Miller " had been writing 
for several years before the bearings of his course 
could be confidently calculated. Some of his 
earlier tales, — as, for example, "The Madonna 
of the Future," — while keeping near- reality on 
one side, are on the other eminently fanciful and 
ideal. He seemed to feel the attraction of fairy- 
land, but to lack resolution to swallow it whole ; 
so, instead of idealizing both persons and plot, as 



62 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

Hawthorne had ventured to do, he tried to per- 
suade real persons to work out an ideal destiny. 
But the tact, delicacy, and reticence with which 
these : attempts were made did not blind him to 
the essential incongruity ; either realism or ideal- 
ism had to go, and step by step he dismissed the 
latter, until at length TurgueniefFs current 
caught him. By this time, however, his culture 
had become too wide, and his independent views 
too confirmed, to admit of his yielding uncondi- 
tionally to the great Russian. Especially his 
critical familiarity with French literature opera- 
ted to broaden, if at the same time to render less 
trenchant, his method and expression. His char- 
acters are drawn with fastidious care, and closely 
follow the tones and fashions of real life. Each 
utterance is so exactly like what it ought to be 
that the reader feels the same sort of pleased sur- 
prise as is afforded by a phonograph which re- 
peats, with all the accidental pauses and inflec- 
tions, the speech spoken into it. Yet the words 
come through a medium ; they are not quite spon- 
taneous ; these figures have not the sad, human 
inevitableness of Turguenieffs people. The rea- 
son seems to be (leaving the difference between 
the genius of the two writers out of account) that 



NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 63 

the American, unlike the Russian, recognizes no 
tragic importance in the situation. To the latter, 
the vision of life is so ominous that his voice 
waxes sonorous and terrible ; his eyes, made keen 
by foreboding, see the leading elements of the 
conflict, and them only ; he is no idle singer of 
an empty day, but he speaks because speech 
springs out of him. To his mind, the foundations 
of human welfare are in jeopardy, and it is full 
time to decide what means may avert the danger. 
But the American does not think any cataclysm 
is impending, or if any there be, nobody can help 
it. The subjects that best repay attention are 
the minor ones of civilization, culture, behavior ; 
how to avoid certain vulgarities and follies, how 
to inculcate certain principles : and to illustrate 
these points heroic types are not needed. In 
other words, the situation being unheroic, so must 
the actors be ; for, apart from the inspirations of 
circumstances, Napoleon no more than John 
Smith is recognizable as a hero. 

Now, in adopting this view, a writer places him- 
self under several manifest disadvantages. If 
you are to be an agnostic, it is better (for novel- 
writing purposes) not to be a complacent or re- 
signed one. Otherwise your characters will find 



64 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

it difficult to show what is in them. A man re- 
veals and classifies himself in proportion to the 
severity of the condition or action required of 
him , hence the American novelist's people are in 
considerable straits to make themselves ade- 
quately known to us. They cannot lay bare 
their inmost soul over a cup of tea or a picture 
by Cor8t ; so, in order to explain themselves, they 
must not only submit to dissection at the author's 
hands, but must also devote no little time and 
ingenuity to dissecting themselves and one an- 
other. But dissection is one thing, and the living 
word rank from the heart and absolutely reeking 
of the human creature that uttered it — the word 
that Turguenieff's people are constantly uttering — 
is another. Moreover, in the dearth of command- 
ing traits and stirring events, there is a continual 
temptation to magnify those which are petty and 
insignificant. Instead of a telescope to sweep the 
heavens, we are furnished with a microscope to 
detect infusoria. We want a description of a 
mountain; and, instead of receiving an outline, 
naked and severe, perhaps, but true and impres- 
sive, we are introduced to a tiny field on its 
immeasurable side, and we go botanizing and 
insect-hunting there. This is realism ; but it is 



NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 65 

the realism of texture, not of form and relation. 
It encourages our glance to be near-sighted in- 
stead of comprehensive. Above all, there is a 
misgiving that we do not touch the writer's true 
quality, and that these scenes of his, so elabo- 
rately and conscientiously prepared, have cost him 
much thought and pains, but not one throb of 
the heart or throe of the spirit. The experiences 
that he depicts have not, one fancies, marked 
wrinkles on his forehead or turned his hair gray. 
There are two kinds of reserve — the reserve 
which feels that its message is too mighty for it,. 
and the reserve which feels that it is too mighty 
for its message. Our new school of writers is 
reserved, but its reserve does not strike one as 
being of the former kind. It cannot be said 
of any one of Mr. James's stories, u This is his 
best," or " This is his worst," because no one of 
them is all one way. They have their phases of 
strength and veracity, and, also, phases that are 
neither veracious nor strong. The cause may 
either lie in a lack of experience in a cer- 
tain direction on the writer's part ; or else in 
his reluctance to write up to the experience he 
has. The experience in question is not of the 
ways of the world, — concerning which Mr. James 



66 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

lias every sign of being politely familiar, — nor 
of men and women in their every-day aspect; 
still less of literary ways and means, for of 
these, in his own line, he is a master. The 
experience referred to is experience of passion. 
If Mr. James be not incapable of describing 
passion, at all events he has still to show that he 
is capable of it. He has introduced us to many 
characters that seem to have in them capacity for 
the highest passion, — as witness Christina Light, 
— and yet he has never allowed them an oppor- 
tunity to develop it. He seems to evade the situ- 
ation ; but the evasion is managed with so much 
plausibility that, although we may be disap- 
pointed, or even irritated, and feel, more or less 
vaguely, that we have been unfairly dealt with, 
we .are unable to show exactly where or how the 
unfairness comes in. Thus his novels might be 
compared to a beautiful face, full of culture and 
good breeding, but lacking that fire of the eye 
and fashion of the lip that betray a living human 
soul. 

The other one of the two writers whose names 
are so often mentioned together, seems to have 
taken up the subject of our domestic and social 
pathology ; and the minute care and conscientious 



NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 67 

veracity which he has brought to bear u r on his 
work has not been surpassed, even by Shake- 
speare. But, if I could venture a criticism upon 
his productions, it would be to the effect that 
there is not enough fiction in them. They are 
elaborate and amiable reports of what we see 
around us. They are not exactly imaginative, — 
in the sense in which I have attempted to define 
the word. There are two ways of warning a man 
against unwholesome life — one is, to show him a 
picture of disease ; the other is, to show him a 
picture of health. The former is the negative, 
the latter the positive treatment. Both have 
their merits ; but the latter is, perhaps, the better 
adapted to novels, the former to essays. A novel- 
ist should not only know what he has got ; he 
should also know what he wants. His mind 
should have an active, or theorizing, as well 
as a passive, or contemplative, side. He should 
have energy to discount the people he person- 
ally knows ; the power to perceive what phases 
of thought are to be represented, as well as 
to describe the persons who happen to be their 
least inadequate representatives ; the sagacity 
to analyze the age or the moment, and to re- 
veal its tendency and meaning. Mr. Ho wells 



68 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

has produced a great deal of finely wrought tapes- 
try ; but does not seem, as yet, to have found a 
hall fit to adorn it with. 

And yet Mr. James and Mr. Howells have done 
more than all the rest of us to make our literature 
respectable during the last ten years. If texture 
be the object, they have brought texture to a fine- 
ness never surpassed anywhere. They have dis- 
covered charm and grace in much that was only 
blank before. They have detected and described 
points of human nature hitherto unnoticed, which, 
if not intrinsically important, will one day be 
made auxiliary to the production of pictures of 
broader as well as minuter veracity than have 
heretofore been produced. All that seems want- 
ing thus far is a direction, an aim, a belief. Ag- 
nosticism has brought about a pause for a while, 
and no doubt a pause is preferable to some kinds 
of activity. It may enable us, when the time 
comes to set forward again, to do so with better 
equipment and more intelligent purpose. It will 
not -do to be always at a prophetic heat of enthusi- 
asm, sympathy, denunciation: the coolly critical 
mood is also useful to prune extravagance and 
promote a sense of responsibility. The novels of 
Mr. James and of Mr. Howells have taught us that 



NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 69 

men and women are creatures of infinitely compli- 
cated structure, and that even the least of these 
complications, if it is portrayed at all, is worth 
portraying truthfully. But we cannot forget, on 
the other hand, that honest emotion and hearty 
action are necessary to the wholesomeness of soci- 
ety, because in their absence society is afflicted 
with a lamentable sameness and triviality ; the 
old primitive impulses remain, but the food on 
which they are compelled to feed is insipid and 
unsustaining ; our eyes are turned inward instead 
of outward, and each one of us becomes himself 
the Rome towards which all his roads lead. Such 
books as these authors have written are not the 
Great American Novel, because they take life and 
humanity not in their loftier, but in their lesser 
manifestations. They are the side scenes and the 
background of a story that has yet to be written. 
That story will have the interest not only of the 
collision of private passions and efforts, but of the 
great ideas and principles which characterize and 
animate a nation. It will discriminate between 
what is accidental and what is permanent, be- 
tween what is realistic and what is real, between 
what is sentimental and what is sentiment. It 
will show us not only what we are, but what we 



70 m CONFESSIONS AND CEITICISMS. 

are to be ; not only what to avoid, but what to do. 
It will rest neither in the tragic gloom of Turgue- 
nieff, nor in the critical composure of James, nor 
in the gentle deprecation of Howells, but will de- 
monstrate that the weakness of man is the motive 
and condition of his strength. It will not shrink 
from romance, nor from ideality, nor from artistic 
completeness, because it will know at what depths 
and heights of life these elements are truly opera- 
tive. It will be American, not because its scene 
is laid or its characters born in the United States, 
but because its burden will be reaction against old 
tyrannies and exposure of new hypocrisies ; a ref- 
utation of respectable falsehoods, and a procla- 
mation of unsophisticated truths. Indeed, let us 
take heed and diligently improve our native tal- 
ent, lest a day come when the Great American 
Novel make its appearance, but written in a for- 
eign language, and by some author who — how- 
ever purely American at heart — never set foot on 
the shores of the Republic. 



CHAPTER III. 

AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 

Contemporary criticism will have it that, in 
order to create an American Literature, we must 
use American materials. The term " Literature " 
has, no doubt, come to be employed in a loose 
sense. The London Saturday Revieiu has (or 
used to have until lately) a monthly two-column 
article devoted to what it called "American Liter- 
ature," three-fourths of- which were devoted to an 
examination of volumes of State Histories, Statis- 
cal Digests, Records of the Census, and other such 
works as were never, before or since, suspected 
of being literature ; while the remaining fourth 
mentioned the titles (occasionally with a line of 
comment) of whatever productions were at hand 
in the way of essays, novels, and poetry. This 
would seem to indicate that we may have — nay, 
are already possessed of — an American Literature, 
composed of American materials, provided only 
that we consent to adopt the Saturday Review's 
conception of what literature is. 

71 



72 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

Many of us believe, however, that the essays, 
the novels, and the poetry, as well as the statistical 
digests, ought to go to the making up of a national 
literature. It has been discovered, however, that 
the existence of the former does not depend, to 
the same extent as that of the latter, upon the 
employment of exclusively American material. A 
book about the census, if it be not American, is 
nothing ; but a poem or a romance, though writ- 
ten by a native-born American, who, perhaps, has 
never crossed the Atlantic, not only may, but fre- 
quently does, have nothing in it that can be 
called essentially American, except its English 
and, occasionally, its ideas. And the question 
arises whether such productions can justly be held 
to form component parts of what shall hereafter 
be recognized as the literature of America. 

How was it with the makers of English litera- 
ture ? Beginning with Chaucer, his " Canterbury 
Pilgrims " is English, both in scene and character ; 
it is even mentioned of the Abbess that " Frenche 
of Paris was to her unknowe " ; but his " Legende 
of Goode Women " might, so far as its subject- 
matter is concerned, have been written by a 
French, a Spanish, or an Italian Chaucer, just as 
well as by the British Daniel. Spenser's " Faerie 



AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 73 

Queene" numbers St. George and King Arthur 
among its heroes ; but its scene is laid in Faerie 
Lande, if it be laid anywhere, and it is a bare- 
faced moral allegory throughout. Shakespeare 
wrote thirty-seven plays, the elimination of which 
from English literature would undeniably be a 
serious loss to it ; yet, of these plays twenty-three 
have entirely foreign scenes and characters. Mil- 
ton, as a political writer, was English; but his 
" Paradise Lost and Regained," his " Samson," his 
" Ode on the Nativity," his " Comus," bear no 
reference to the land of his birth. Dry den's best- 
known work to-day is his "Alexander's Feast." 
Pope has come down to us as the translator of 
Homer. Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and 
Sterne are the great quartet of English novelists 
of the last century ; but Smollett, in his preface 
to " Roderick Random," after an admiring allusion 
to the " Gil Bias " of Le Sage, goes on to say : 
" The following sheets I have modelled on his 
plan " ; and Sterne was always talking and think- 
ing about Cervantes, and comparing himself to 
the great Spaniard : " I think there is more laugh- 
able humor, with an equal degree of Cervantic 
satire, if not more, than in the last," he writes of 
one of his chapters, to " my witty widow, Mrs. F." 



74 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

Many even of Walter Scott's romances are un- 
English in their elements ; and the fame of Shel- 
ley, Keats, and Byron rests entirely upon their 
"foreign" work. Coleridge's poetry and philoso- 
phy bear no technical stamp of nationality ; and, 
to come down to later times, Carlyle was pro- 
foundly imbued with Germanism, while the 
" Romola " of George Eliot and the " Cloister and 
the Hearth " of Charles Reade are by many con- 
sidered to be the best of their works. In the 
above enumeration innumerable instances in 
point are, of course, omitted; but enough have 
been given, perhaps, to show that imaginative 
writers have not generally been disowned by their 
country on the ground that they have availed 
themselves, in their writings, of other scenes and 
characters than those of their own immediate 
neighborhoods. 

The statistics of the work of the foremost 
American writers could easily be shown to be 
much more strongly imbued with the specific 
flavor of their environment. Benjamin Franklin, 
though he was an author before the United States 
existed, was American to the marrow. The 
" Leather-Stocking Tales " of Cooper are the 
American epic. Irving's " Knickerbocker " and 



AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 75 

his " Woolfert's Roost " will long outlast his other 
productions. Poe's most popular tale, "The Gold- 
Bug," is American in its scene, and so is " The 
Mystery of Marie Roget," in spite of its French 
nomenclature ; and all that he wrote is strongly 
tinged with the native hue of his strange genius. 
Longfellow's " Evangeline " and " Hiawatha " and 
" Miles Standish," and such poems as "The Skel- 
eton in Armor " and " The Building of the Ship," 
crowd out of sight his graceful translations and 
adaptations. Emerson is the veritable American 
eagle of our literature, so that to be Emersonian 
is to be American. Whittier and Holmes have 
never looked beyond their native boundaries, and 
Hawthorne has brought the stern gloom of the 
Puritan period and the uneasy theorizings of the 
present day into harmony with the universal and 
permanent elements of human nature. There was 
certainly nothing European visible in the crude 
but vigorous stories of Theodore Winthrop ; and 
Bret Harte, the most brilliant figure among our 
later men, is not only American, but Californian, 
— as is, likewise, the Poet of the Sierras. It is 
not necessary to go any further. Mr. Henry 
James, having enjoyed early and singular oppor- 
tunities of studying the effects of the recent an- 



76 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

nual influx of Americans, cultured and otherwise, 
into England and the Continent, has very sensibly 
and effectively, and with exquisite grace of style 
and pleasantness of thought, made, the phenome- 
non the theme of a remarkable series of stories. 
Hereupon the cry of an "International School" 
has been raised, and critics profess to be seriously 
alarmed lest we should ignore the signal advan- 
tages for mise-en-scene presented by this Western 
half of the planet, and should enter into vain and 
unpatriotic competition with foreign writers on 
their own ground. The truth is, meanwhile, that 
it would have been a much surer sign of affecta- 
tion in us to have abstained from literary com- 
ment upon the patent and notable fact of this 
international rapprochement, — which is just as 
characteristic an American trait as the episode of 
the Argonauts of 1849, — and we have every 
reason to be grateful to Mr. Henry James, and to 
his school, if he has any, for having rescued us 
from the opprobrium of so foolish a piece of know- 
nothingism. The phase is, of course, merely tem- 
porary ; its interest and significance will presently 
be exhausted ; but, because we are American, are 
we to import no French cakes and English ale ? 
As a matter of fact, we are too timid and self- 



AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 77 

conscious; and these infirmities imply a much 
more serious obstacle to the formation of a char- 
acteristic literature than does any amount of gad- 
ding abroad. 

That must be a very shallow literature which 
depends for its national flavor and character upon 
its topography and its dialect ; and the criticism 
which can conceive of no deeper Americanism 
than this is shallower still. What is an American 
book? It is a book written by an American, 
and by one who writes as an American ; that is, 
unaffectedly. So an English book is a book writ- 
ten by an unaffected Englishman. What differ- 
ence can it make what the subject of the writing 
is ? Mr. Henry James lately brought out a vol- 
ume of essays on " French Poets and Novelists." 
Mr. E. C. Stedman recently published a series of 
monographs on "The Victorian Poets." Are 
these books French and English, or are they non- 
descript, or are they American ? Not only are 
they American, but they are more essentially 
American than if they had been disquisitions 
upon American literature. And the reason is, of 
course, that they subject the things of the old 
world to the tests of the new, and thereby vindi- 
cate and illustrate the characteristic mission of 



78 CONFESSIONS AND CEITICISMS. 

America to mankind. We are here to hold up 
European conventionalisms and prejudices in the 
light of the new day, and thus afford everybody 
the opportunity, never heretofore enjoyed, of 
judging them by other standards, and in other 
surroundings than those amidst which they came 
into existence. In the same way, Emerson's 
" English Traits " is an American thing, and it 
gives categorical reasons why American things 
should be. And what is an American novel 
except a novel treating of persons, places, and 
ideas from an American point of view ? The 
point of view is the point, not the thing seen 
from it. 

But it is said that "the great American novel," 
in order fully to deserve its name, ought to have 
American scenery. Some thousands of years ago, 
the Greeks had a novelist — Homer — who evolved 
the great novel of that epoch ; but the scenery of 
that novel was Trojan, not Greek. The story is a 
criticism, from a Greek standpoint, of foreign 
affairs, illustrated with practical examples ; and, 
as regards treatment, quite as much care is be- 
stowed upon the delineation of Hector, Priam, 
and Paris, as upon Agamemnon, Menelaus, and 
Achilles. The same story, told by a Trojan 



AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 79 

Homer, would doubtless have been very different; 
but it is by no means certain that it would have 
been any better told. It embodies, whether sym- 
bolically or literally matters not, the triumph of 
Greek ideas and civilization. But, even so, the 
sympathies of the reader are not always, or per- 
haps uniformly, on the conquering side. Homer 
was doubtless a patriot, but he shows no signs of 
having been a bigot. He described that great 
international episode with singular impartiality; 
what chiefly interested him was the play of human 
nature. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that 
the Greeks were backward in admitting his claims 
as their national poet; and we may legitimately 
conclude that were an American Homer — 
whether in prose or poetry — to appear among 
us, he might pitch his scene where he liked — 
in Patagonia, or on the banks of the Zambezi — 
and we should accept the situation with perfect 
equanimity. Only let him be a native of New 
York, or Boston, or San Francisco, or Mullenville, 
and be inspired with the American idea, and we 
ask no more. Whatever he writes will belong to 
our literature, and add lustre to it. 

One hears many complaints about the snobbish- 
ness of running after things European. Go West, 



80 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

young man, these moralists say, or go down Fifth 
Avenue, and investigate Chatham Street, and 
learn that all the elements of romance, to him 
who has the seeing eye, lie around your own front 
doorstep and back yard. But let not these per- 
sons forget that he who fears Europe is a less re- 
spectable snob than he who studies it. Let us 
welcome Europe in our books as freely as we do 
at Castle Garden; we may do so safely. If our 
digestion be not strong enough to assimilate her, 
and work up whatever is valuable in her into our 
own bone and sinew, then America is not the 
thing we took her for. For what is America ? Is 
it simply a reproduction of one of these Eastern 
nationalities, which we are so fond of alluding to 
as effete? Surely not. It is a new departure in 
history ; it is a new door opened to the develop- 
ment of the human race, or, as I should prefer to 
say, of humanity. We are misled by the chatter 
of politicians and the bombast of Congress. In 
the course of ages, the time has at last arrived 
when man, all over this planet, is entering upon a 
new career of moral, intellectual, and political 
emancipation; and America is the concrete ex- 
pression and theatre of that great fact, as all 
spiritual truths find their fitting and representa- 



AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 81 

tive physical incarnation. But what would this 
huge western continent be, if America — the real 
America of the mind — had no existence? It 
would be a body without a soul, and would bet- 
ter, therefore, not be at all. If America is to be 
a repetition of Europe on a larger scale, it is not 
worth the pain of governing it. Europe has 
shown what European ideas can accomplish ; and 
whatever fresh thought or impulse comes to birth 
in it can be nothing else than an American 
thought and impulse, and must sooner or later 
find its way here, and become naturalized with its 
brethren. Buds and blossoms of America are 
sprouting forth all over the Old World, and we 
gather in the fruit. They do not find themselves 
at home there, but they know where their home 
is. The old country feels them like thorns in her 
old flesh, and is gladly rid of them ; but such 
prickings are the only wholesome and hopeful 
symptoms she presents ; if they ceased to trouble 
her, she would be dead indeed. She has an un- 
easy experience before her, for a time ; but the 
time will come when she, too, will understand 
that her ease is her disease, and then Castle 
Garden may close its doors, for America will be 
everywhere. 



82 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

If, then, America is something vastly more 
than has hitherto been understood by the word 
nation, it is proper that we attach to that other 
word, patriotism, a significance broader and 
loftier than has been conceived till now. By so 
much as the idea that we represent is great, by so 
much are we, in comparison with it, inevitably 
chargeable with littleness and short-comings. For 
we are of the same flesh and blood as our neigh- 
bors ; it is only our opportunities and our respon- 
sibilities that are fairer and weightier than theirs. 
Circumstances afford every excuse to them, but 
none to us. " E Pluribus Unum " is a frivolous 
motto ; our true one should be, "Noblesse oblige" 
But, with a strange perversity, in all matters of 
comparison between ourselves and others, we dis- 
play what we are pleased to call our patriotism by 
an absurd touchiness as to points wherein Europe, 
with its settled and polished civilization, must 
needs be our superior ; and are quite indifferent 
about those things by which our real strength is 
constituted. Can we not be content to learn from 
Europe the graces, the refinements, the amenities 
of life, so long as we are able to teach her life it- 
self ? For my part, I never saw in England any 
appurtenance of civilization, calculated to add to 



AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 83 

the convenience and commodiousness of existence, 
that did not seem to me to surpass anything of 
the kind that we have in this country. Notwith- 
standing which — and I am far, indeed, from hav- 
ing any pretensions to asceticism — I would have 
been fairly stifled at the idea of having to spend 
my life there. No American can live in Europe, 
unless he means to return home, or unless, at any 
rate, he returns here in mind, in hope, in belief. 
For an American to accept England, or any other 
country, as both a mental and physical finality, 
would, it seems to me, be tantamount to renounc- 
ing his very life. To enjoy English comforts at 
the cost of adopting English opinions, would be 
about as pleasant as to have the privilege of re- 
taining one's body on condition of surrendering 
one's soul, and would, indeed, amount to just 
about the same thing. 

I fail, therefore, to feel any apprehension as to 
our literature becoming Europeanized, because 
whatever is American in it must lie deeper than 
anything European can penetrate. More than 
that, I believe and hope that our novelists will 
deal with Europe a great deal more, and a great 
deal more intelligently, than they have done yet. 
It is a true and healthy artistic instinct that leads 



84 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

them to do so. Hawthorne — and no American 
writer, had a better right than he to contradict 
his own argument — says, in the preface to the 
" Marble Faun," in a passage that has been often 
quoted, but will bear repetition : — 

" Italy, as the site of a romance, was chiefly valuable to him 
as affording a sort of poetic or fairy precinct, where actualities 
would not be so terribly insisted on as they are, and must needs 
be, in America. No author, without a trial, can conceive of 
the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there 
is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and 
gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in 
broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my 
dear native land. It will be very long, I trust, before ro- 
mance writers may find congenial and easily handled themes, 
either in the annals of our stalwart Eepublic, or in any 
characteristic and probable events of our individual lives. 
Eomance and poetry, ivy, lichens, and wall-flowers, need ruin 
to make them grow." 

Now, what is to be understood from this pas- 
sage ? It assumes, in the first place, that a work 
of art, in order to be effective, must contain pro- 
found contrasts of light and shadow ; and then it 
points out that the shadow, at least, is found ready 
to the hand in Europe. There is no hint of patri- 
otic scruples as to availing one's self of such a 
" picturesque and gloomy " background ; if it is 
to be had, then let it be taken ; the main object 
to be considered is. the work of art. Europe, in 



AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 85 

short, afforded an excellent quarry, from which, 
in Hawthorne's opinion, the American novelist 
might obtain materials which are conspicuously 
deficient in his own country, and which that 
country is all the better for not possessing. In 
the " Marble Faun " the author had conceived a 
certain idea, and he considered that he had been 
not unsuccessful in realizing it. The subject was 
new, and full of especial attractions to his genius, 
and it would manifestly have been impossible to 
adapt it to an American setting. There was one 
drawback connected with it, and this Hawthorne 
did not fail to recognize. He remarks in the pre- 
face that he had " lived too long abroad not to be 
aware that a foreigner seldom acquires that know- 
ledge of a country at once flexible and profound, 
which may justify him in endeavoring to idealize 
its traits." But he was careful not to attempt "a 
portraiture of Italian manners and character." 
He made use of the Italian scenery and atmos- 
phere just so far as was essential to the develop- 
ment of his idea, and consistent with the extent of 
his Italian knowledge; and, for the rest, fell back 
upon American characters and principles. The 
result has been long enough before the world to 
have met with a proper appreciation. I have 



86 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

heard regret expressed that the power employed 
by the author in working out this story had not 
been applied to a romance dealing with a purely 
American subject. But to analyze this objection 
is to dispose of it. A man of genius is not, com- 
monly, enfeebled by his own productions ; and, 
physical accidents aside, Hawthorne was just as 
capable of writing another " Scarlet Letter " after 
the "Marble Faun" was published, as he had 
been before. Meanwhile, few will deny that our 
literature would be a loser had the "Marble 
Faun " never been written. 

The drawback above alluded to is, however, not 
to be underrated. It may operate in two ways. 
In the first place, the American's European obser- 
vations may be inaccurate. As a child, looking at 
a sphere, might suppose it to be a flat disc, shaded 
at one side and lighted at the other, so a sight- 
seer in Europe may ascribe to what he beholds 
qualities and a character quite at variance with 
what a more fundamental knowledge would have 
enabled him to perceive. In the second place, the 
stranger in a strange land, be he as accurate as he 
may, will always tend to look at what is around 
him objectively, instead of allowing it subjectively 
— or, as it were, unconsciously — to color his nar- 



AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 87 

rative. He will be more apt directly to describe 
what he sees, than to convey the feeling or aroma 
of it without description. It would doubtless, for 
instance, be possible for Mr. Henry James to 
write an " English " or even a " French " novel 
without falling into a single technical error ; but 
it is no less certain that a native writer, of equal 
ability, would treat the same subject in a very 
different manner. Mr. Jamess' version might con- 
tain a great deal more of definite information ; 
but the native work would insinuate an impres- 
sion which both comes from and goes to a greater 
depth of apprehension. 

But, on the other hand, it is not contended that 
any American should write an " English " or any- 
thing but an " American " novel. The contention 
is, simply, that he should not refrain from using 
foreign material, when it happens to suit his exi- 
gencies, merely because it is foreign. Objective 
writing may be quite as good reading as subject- 
ive writing, in its proper place and function. In 
fiction, no more than elsewhere, may a writer pre- 
tend to be what he is not, or to know what he 
knows not. When he finds himself abroad, he 
must frankly admit his situation ; and more will 
not then be required of him than he is fairly 



88 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

competent to afford. It will seldom happen, as 
Hawthorne intimates, that he can successfully 
reproduce the inner workings and philosophy of 
European social and political customs and peculi- 
arities ; but he can give a picture of the scenery 
as vivid as can the aborigine, or more so ; he can 
make an accurate study of personal native charac- 
ter; and, finally, and most important of all, he 
can make use of the conditions of European civil- 
ization in events, incidents, and situations which 
would be impossible on this side of the water. 
The restrictions, the traditions, the law, and the 
license of those old countries are full of sug- 
gestions to the student of character and circum- 
stances, and supply him with colors and effects 
that he would else search for in vain. For the 
truth may as well be admitted ; we are at a distinct 
disadvantage, in America, in respect of the mate- 
rials of romance. Not that vigorous, pathetic, 
striking stories may not be constructed here; and 
there is humor enough, the humor of dialect, of 
incongruity of character; but, so far as the story 
depends for its effect, not upon psychical and per- 
sonal, but upon physical and general events and 
situations, we soon feel the limit of our resources. 
An analysis of the human soul, such as may be 



AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 89 

found in the " House of the Seven Gables," for 
instance, is absolute in its interest, apart from 
outward conditions. But such an analysis cannot 
be carried on, so to say, in vacuo. You must have 
solid ground to stand on ; you must have fitting 
circumstances, background, and perspective. The 
ruin of a soul, the tragedy of a heart, demand, as 
a necessity of harmony and picturesque effect, a 
corresponding and consj)iring environment and 
stage — just as, in music, the air in the treble is 
supported and reverberated by the bass accompa- 
niment. The immediate, contemporary act or 
predicament loses more than half its meaning and 
impressiveness if it be re-echoed from no sounding- 
board in the past — its notes, however sweetly 
and truly touched, fall flatly on the ear. The 
deeper we attempt to pitch the key of an Amer- 
ican story, therefore, the more difficulty shall we 
find in providing a congruous setting for it ; and 
it is interesting to note how the masters of the 
craft have met the difficulty. In the " Seven Ga- 
bles" — and I take leave to say that if I draw 
illustrations from this particular writer, it is for 
no other reason than that he presents, more for- 
cibly than most, a method of dealing with the 
special problem we are considering — Hawthorne, 



90 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

with the intuitive skill of genius, evolves a back- 
ground, and produces a reverberation, from ma- 
terials which he may be said to have created 
almost as much as discovered. The idea of a 
house, founded two hundred years ago upon a 
crime, remaining ever since in possession of its 
original owners, and becoming the theatre, at last, 
of the judgment upon that crime, is a thoroughly 
picturesque idea, but it is thoroughly un-Ameri- 
can. Such a thing might conceivably occur, but 
nothing in this country could well be more un- 
likely. No one before Hawthorne had ever 
thought of attempting such a thing ; at all events, 
no one else, before or since, has accomplished it. 
The preface to the romance in question reveals 
the principle upon which its author worked, and 
incidentally gives a new definition of the term 
"romance," — a definition of which, thus far, no 
one but its propounder has known how to avail 
himself. It amounts, in fact, to an acknowledg- 
ment that it is impossible to write a " novel" of 
American life that shall be at once artistic, real- 
istic, and profound. A novel, he says, aims at a 
"very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, 
but to the probable and ordinary course of man's 
experience." A romance, on the other hand, 



AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 91 

" while, as a work of art, it must rigidly subject 
itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so 
far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the 
human heart, has fairly a right to present that 
truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of 
the writer's own choosing or creation. If he think 
fit, also, he may so manage his atmospherical me- 
dium as to bring out and mellow the lights, and 
deepen and enrich the shadows, of the picture." 
This is good advice, no doubt, but not easy to 
follow. We can all understand, however, that 
the difficulties would be greatly lessened could 
we but command backgrounds of the European 
order. Thackeray, the Brontes, George Eliot, 
and others have written great stories, which 
did not have to be romances, because the 
literal conditions of life in England have a 
picturesque ness and a depth which correspond 
well enough with whatever moral and men- 
tal scenery we may project upon them. Haw- 
thorne was forced to use the scenery and 
capabilities of his native town of Salem. He 
saw that he could not present these in a realistic 
light, and his artistic instinct showed him that he 
must modify or veil the realism of his figures in 
the same degree and manner as that of his acces- 



92 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

sories. No doubt, his peculiar genius and temper- 
ament eminently qualified him to produce this 
magical change ; it was a remarkable instance of 
the spontaneous marriage, so to speak, of the 
means to the end ; and even when, in Italy, he 
had an opportunity to write a story which should 
be accurate in fact, as well as faithful to "the truth 
of the human heart," he still preferred a subject 
which bore to the Italian environment the same 
relation that the " House of the Seven Gables " 
and the "Scarlet Letter" do to the American one; 
in other words, the conception of Donatello is re- 
moved as much further than Clifford or Hester 
Prynne from literal realism as the inherent ro- 
mance of the Italian setting is above that of New 
England. The whole thing is advanced a step 
further towards pure idealism, the relative pro- 
portions being maintained. 

" The Blithedale Romance " is only another in- 
stance in point, and here, as before, we find the 
principle admirably stated in the preface. "In 
the old countries," says Hawthorne, " a novelist's 
work is not put exactly side by side with nature ; 
and he is allowed a license with regard to every- 
day probability, in view of the improved effects 
he is bound to produce thereby. Among our- 



AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 93 

selves, on the contrary, there is as yet no Faery 
Land, so like the real world that, in a suitable re- 
moteness, we cannot well tell the difference, but 
with an atmosphere of strange enchantment, be- 
held through which the inhabitants have a pro- 
priety of their own. This atmosphere is what the 
American romancer needs. In its absence, the 
beings of his imagination are compelled to show 
themselves in the same category as actually living 
mortals; a necessity that renders the paint and 
pasteboard of their composition but too painfully 
discernible." Accordingly, Hawthorne selects the 
Brook Farm episode (or a reflection of it) as af- 
fording his drama "a theatre, a little removed 
from the highway of ordinary travel, where the 
creatures of his brain may play their phantasma- 
gorical antics, without exposing them to too close 
a comparison with the actual events of real lives." 
In this case, therefore, an exceptional circumstance 
is made to answer the same purpose that was 
attained by different means in the other 
romances. 

But in what manner have our other writers of 
fiction treated the difficulties that were thus dealt 
with by Hawthorne? — Herman Melville cannot 
be instanced here ; for his only novel or romance, 



94 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

whichever it be, was also the most impossible of 
all his books, and really a terrible example of the 
enormities which a man of genius may perpetrate 
when working in a direction unsuited to him. I 
refer, of course, to " Pierre, or the Ambiguities." 
Oliver Wendell Holmes's two delightful stories 
are as favorable examples of what can be done, in 
the way of an American novel, by a wise, witty, 
and learned gentleman, as we are likely to see. 
Nevertheless, one cannot avoid the feeling that 
they are the work of a man who has achieved suc- 
cess and found recognition in other ways than by 
stories, or even poems and essays. The interest, 
in either book, centres round one of those physio- 
logical phenomena which impinge so strangely 
upon the domain of the soul ; for the rest, they 
are simply accurate and humorous portraitures of 
local dialects and peculiarities, and thus afford 
little assistance in the search for a universally ap- 
plicable rule of guidance. Doctor Holmes, I be- 
lieve, objects to having the term "medicated" ap- 
plied .to his tales ; but surely the adjective is not 
reproachful ; it indicates one of the most charm- 
ing and also, alas ! inimitable features of his work. 
Bret Harte is probably as valuable a witness as 
could be summoned in this case. His touch is 



AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 95 

realistic, and yet his imagination is poetic and ro- 
mantic. He has discovered something. He has 
done something both new and good. Within the 
space of some fifty pages, he has painted a .series 
of pictures which will last as long as anything in 
the fifty thousand pages of Dickens. Taking 
"The Outcasts of Poker Flat" as perhaps the 
most nearly perfect of the tales, as well as the 
most truly representative of the writer's powers, 
let us try to guess its secret. In the first place, it 
is very short, — a single episode, succinctly and 
eloquently told. The descriptions of scenery and 
persons are masterly and memorable. The char- 
acters of these persons, their actions, and the cir- 
cumstances of their lives, are as rugged, as gro- 
tesque, as terrible, and also as beautiful, as the 
scenery. Thus an artistic harmony is established, 
— the thing which is lacking in so much of our 
literature. The story moves swiftly on, through 
humor, pathos, and tragedy, to its dramatic close. 
It is given with perfect literary taste, and naught 
in its phases of human nature is either extenuated 
or set down in malice. The little narrative can 
be read in a few minutes, and can never be for- 
gotten. But it is only an episode ; and it is an 
episode of an episode, — that of the Californian 



96 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

gold-fever. The story of the Argonauts is only 
one story, after all, and these tales of Harte's are 
but so many facets of the same gem. They are 
not, however, like chapters in a romance ; there is 
no such vital connection between them as devel- 
ops a cumulative force. We are no more im- 
pressed after reading half a dozen of them than 
after the first ; they are variations of the same 
theme. They discover to us no new truth about 
human nature ; they only show us certain human 
beings so placed as to act out their naked selves, 
— to be neither influenced nor protected by the 
rewards and screens of conventional civilization. 
The affectation and insincerity of our daily life 
make such a spectacle fresh and pleasing to us. 
But we enjoy it because of its unexpectedness, 
its separateness, its unlikeness to the ordinary 
course of existence. It is like a huge, strange, 
gorgeous flower, an exaggeration and intensifica- 
tion of such flowers as we know; but a flower 
without roots, unique, never to be reproduced. 
It is fitting that its portrait should be painted; 
but, once done, it is done with ; we cannot fill 
our picture-gallery with it. Carlyle wrote the 
History of the French Revolution, and Bret Harte 
has written the History of the Argonauts ; but it 



AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 97 

is absurd to suppose that a national literature 
could be founded on either episode. 

But though Mr. Harte has not left his fellow- 
craftsmen anything to gather from the lode which 
he opened and exhausted, we may still learn 
something from his method. He took things as 
he found them, and he found them disinclined to 
weave themselves into an elaborate and balanced 
narrative. He recognized the deficiency of histor- 
ical perspective, but he saw that what was lost in 
slowly growing, culminating power was gained in 
vivid, instant force. The deeds of his character 
could not be represented as the final result of 
long-inherited proclivities ; but they could appear 
between their motive and their consequence, like 
the draw — aim — fire ! of the Western desperado, — 
as short, sharp, and conclusive. In other words, the 
conditions of American life, as he saw it, justified 
a short story, or any number of them, but not a 
novel ; and the fact that he did afterwards at- 
tempt a novel only served to confirm his original 
position. I think that the limitation that he dis- 
covered is of much wider application than we are 
prone to realize. American life has been, as yet, 
nothing but a series of episodes, of experiments. 
There has been no such thing as a fixed and 



98 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

settled condition of society, not subject to change 
itself, and therefore affording a foundation and 
contrast to minor or individual vicissitudes. We 
cannot write American-grown novels, because a 
novel is not an episode, nor an aggregation of 
episodes ; we cannot write romances in the Haw- 
thorne sense, because, as yet, we do not seem to 
be clever enough. Several courses are, however, 
open to us, and we are pursuing them all. First, 
we are writing "short stories," accounts of epi- 
sodes needing no historical perspective, and not 
caring for any; and, so far as one may judge, 
we write the best short stories in the world. 
Secondly, we may spin out our short stories into 
long-short stories, just as we may imagine a baby 
six feet high ; it takes up more room, but is just as 
much a baby as one of twelve inches. Thirdly, 
we may graft our flower of romance on a Euro- 
pean stem, and enjoy ourselves as much as the 
European novelists do, and with as clear a con- 
science. We are stealing that which enriches us 
and- does not impoverish them. It is silly and 
childish to make the boundaries of the America of 
the mind coincide with those of the United States. 
We need not dispute about free trade and protec- 
tion here ; literature is not commerce, nor is it 



AMEKICANISM IN FICTION. 99 

politics. America is not a petty nationality, like 
France, England, and Germany ; but whatever in 
such nationalities tends toward enlightenment 
and freedom is American. Let us not, therefore, 
confirm ourselves in a false and ignoble concep- 
tion of our meaning and mission in the world. 
Let us not carry into the temple of the Muse the 
jealousies, the prejudice, the ignorance, the selfish- 
ness of our " Senate " and " Representatives," 
strangely so called ! Let us not refuse to breathe 
the air of Heaven, lest there be something Euro- 
pean or Asian in it. If we cannot have a national 
literature in the narrow, geographical sense of the 
phrase, it is because our inheritance transcends all 
geographical definitions. The great American 
novel may not be written this year, or even in 
this century. Meanwhile, let us not fear to ride, 
and ride to death, whatever species of Pegasus we 
can catch. It can do us no harm, and it may help 
us to acquire a firmer seat against the time when 
our own, our very own winged steed makes his 
appearance. 



CHAPTER IV. 

LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. 

Literature is that quality in books which af- 
fords delight and nourishment to the soul. But 
this is a scientific and skeptical age, insomuch 
that one hardly ventures to take for granted that 
every reader will know what his soul is. It is not 
the intellect, though it gives the intellect light; 
nor the emotions, though they receive their 
warmth from it. It is the most catholic and con- 
stant element of human nature, yet it bears no di- 
rect part in the practical affairs of life ; it does 
not struggle, it does not even suffer ; but merely 
emerges or retires, glows or congeals, according to 
the company in which it finds itself. We might 
say that the soul is a name for man's innate sym- 
pathy with goodness and truth in the abstract; 
for no man can have a bad soul, though his heart 
may be evil, or his mind depraved, because the 
soul's access to the mind or heart has been so 
obstructed as to leave the moral consciousness 

100 



LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. 101 

cold and dark. The soul, in other words, is the 
only conservative and peacemaker ; it affords the 
only unalterable ground upon which all men can 
always meet; it unselfishly indentifies or unites 
us with our fellows, in contradistinction to the 
selfish intellect, which individualizes us and sets 
each man against every other. Doubtless, then, 
the soul is an amiable and desirable possession, 
and it would be a pity to deprive it of so much 
encouragement as may be compatible with due at- 
tention to the serious business of life. For there 
are moments, even in the most active careers, 
when it seems agreeable to forget competition, 
rivalry, jealousy ; when it is a rest to think of one's 
self as a man rather than a person; — moments 
when time and place appear impertinent, and that 
most profitable which affords least palpable profit. 
At such seasons, a man looks inward, or, as the 
American poet puts it, he loafs and invites his 
soul, and then he is at a disadvantage if his soul, 
in consequence of too persistent previous neglect, 
declines to respond to the invitation, and remains 
immured in that secret place which, as years pass by, 
becomes less and less accessible to so many of us. 

When I say that literature nourishes the soul, I 
implicitly refuse the title of literature to anything 



102 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

in books that either directly or indirectly promotes 
any worldly or practical use. Of course, what is 
literature to one man may be anything but litera- 
ture to another, or to the same man under dif- 
ferent circumstances; Virgil to the schoolboy, 
for instance, is a very different thing from the 
Virgil of the scholar. But whatever you read 
with the design of improving yourself in some 
profession, or of acquiring information likely to 
be of advantage to you in any pursuit or contin- 
gency, or of enabling yourself to hold your own 
with other readers, or even of rendering yourself 
that enviable nondescript, a person of culture, — 
whatever, in short, is read with any assignable 
purpose whatever, is in so far not literature. The 
Bible may be literature to Mr. Matthew Arnold, 
because he reads it for fun ; but to Luther, Cal- 
vin, or the pupils of a Sunday-school, it is essen- 
tially something else. Literature is the written 
communications of the soul of mankind with it- 
self; it is liable to appear in the most unexpected 
places, and in the oddest company ; it vanishes 
when we would grasp it, and appears when we 
look not for it. Chairs of literature are estab- 
lished in the great universities, and it is liter- 
ature, no doubt, that the professor discourses ; but 



LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. 103 

it ceases to be literature before it reaches the 
student's ear; though, again, when the same 
students stumble across it in the recesses of their 
memory ten or twenty years later, it may have be- 
come literature once more. Finally, literature 
may, upon occasion, avail a man more than the 
most thorough technical information ; but it will 
not be because it supplements or supplants that 
information, but because it has so tempered and 
exalted his general faculty that whatever he may 
do is done more clearly and comprehensively than 
might otherwise be the case. 

Having thus, in some measure, considered what 
is literature and what the soul, let us note, 
further, that the literature proper to manhood is 
not proper to childhood, though the reverse is not 
— or, at least, never ought to be — true. In 
childhood, the soul and the mind act in harmony ; 
the mind has not become preoccupied or sophisti- 
cated by so-called useful knowledge ; it responds 
obediently to the soul's impulses and intuitions. 
Children have no morality; they have not yet 
descended to the level where morality suggests it- 
self to them. For morality is the outcome of 
spiritual pride, the most stubborn and insidious of 
all sins ; the pride which prompts each of us to 



104 CONFESSIONS AND CEITICISMS. 

declare himself holier than his fellows, and to 
support that claim by parading his docility to the 
Decalogue. Docility to any set of rules, no mat- 
ter of how divine authority, so long as it is 
inspired by hope of future good or present advan- 
tage, is rather worse than useless : except our 
righteousness exceed that of the Scribes and 
Pharisees, — that is, except it be spontaneous 
righteousness or morality, and, therefore, not 
morality, but unconscious goodness, — we shall in 
no wise have benefited either ourselves or others. 
Children, when left to themselves, artlessly and 
innocently act out the nature that is common 
to saint and sinner alike ; they are selfish, angry, 
and foolish, because their state is human ; and 
they are loving, truthful, and sincere, because 
their origin is divine. All that pleases or agrees 
with them is good ; all that opposes or offends 
them is evil, and this, without any reference what- 
ever to the moral code in vogue among their 
elders. But, on the other hand, children cannot 
be tempted as we are, because they suppose that 
everything is free and possible, and because 
they are as yet uncontaminated by the artifi- 
cial cravings which the artificial prohibitions in- 
cident to our civilization create. Life is to them 



LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. 105 

a constantly widening circle of things to be had 
and enjoyed ; nor does it ever occur to them that 
their desires can conflict with those of others, or 
with the laws of the universe. They cannot 
consciously do wrong, nor understand that any 
one else can do so ; untoward accidents may hap- 
pen, but inanimate nature is just as liable to be 
objectionable in this respect as human beings : 
the stone that trips them up, the thorn that 
scratches them, the snow that makes their flesh 
tingle, is an object of their resentment in just the 
same kind and degree as are the men and women 
who thwart or injure them. But of duty — that 
dreary device to secure future reward by present 
suffering; of conscientiousness — that fear of pres- 
ent good for the sake of future punishment ; of 
remorse — that disavowal of past pleasure for fear 
of the sting in its tail; of ambition — that be- 
grudging of all honorable results that are not ef- 
fected by one's self ; of these, and all similar politic 
and arbitrary masks of self-love and pusillanimity, 
these poor children know and suspect nothing. 
Yet their eyes are much keener than ours, for 
they see through the surface of nature and per- 
ceive its symbolism ; they see the living reality, 
of which nature is the veil, and are continually at 



106 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

fault because this veil is not, after all, the reality, 
— because it is fixed and unplastic. The "deep 
mind of dauntless infancy " is, in fact, the only 
revelation we have, except divine revelation it- 
self, of that pure and natural life of man which 
we dream of, and liken to heaven; but we, 
nevertheless, in our penny-wise, pound-foolish 
way, insist upon regarding it as ignorance, and do 
our best, from the earliest possible moment, to 
disenchant and dispel it. We call the outrage 
education, understanding thereby the process of ex- 
terminating in the child the higher order of facul- 
ties and the intuitions, and substituting for them 
the external memory, timidity, self-esteem, and all 
that armament of petty weapons and defences 
which may enable us to get the better of our 
fellow-creatures in this world, and receive the re- 
ward of our sagacity in the next. The success of 
our efforts is pitiably complete ; for though the 
child, if fairly engaged in single combat, might 
make a formidable resistance against the infliction 
of " lessons," it cannot long withstand our crafty 
device of sending it to a place where it sees a 
score or a hundred of little victims like itself, all 
being driven to the same Siberia. The spirit of 
emulation is aroused, and lo ! away they all 



LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. 107 

scamper, each straining its utmost to reach the 
barren goal ahead of all competitors. So do we 
make the most ignoble passions of our children 
our allies in the unholy task of divesting them of 
their childhood. And yet, who is not aware that 
the best men the world has seen have been those 
who, throughout their lives, retained the aroma of 
childlike simplicity which they brought with them 
into existence? Learning — the acquisition of 
specific facts — is not wisdom; it is almost incom- 
patible with wisdom ; indeed, unless the mind be 
powerful enough not only to fuse its facts, but to 
vaporize them, — to sublimate them into an impal- 
pable atmosphere, — they will stand in wisdom's 
way. Wisdom comes from the pondering and the 
application to life of certain truths quite above 
the sphere of facts, and of infinitely more moment 
and less complexity, — truths which are often 
found to be in accordance with the spiritual in- 
stinct called intuition, which children possess 
more fully than grown persons. The wisdom of 
our children would often astonish us, if we would 
only forbear the attempt to make them knowing, 
and submissively accept instruction from them. 
Through all the imperfection of their inherited in- 
firmity, we shall ever and anon be conscious of 



108 CONFESSIONS AND CEITICISMS. 

the radiance of a beautiful, unconscious intelli- 
gence, worth more than the smartness of schools 
and the cleverness of colleges. But no ; we abhor 
the very notion of it, and generally succeed in ex- 
tinguishing it long before the Three R's are done 
with. 

And yet, by wisely directing the child's use of 
the first of the Three, much of the ill effects of the 
trio and their offspring might be counteracted. If 
we believed — if the great mass of people known 
as the civilized world did actually and livingly be- 
lieve — that there was really anything beyond or 
above the physical order of nature, our children's 
literature, wrongly so called, would not be what it 
is. We believe what we can see and touch; we 
teach them to believe the same, and, not satisfied 
with that, we sedulously warn them not to believe 
anything else. The child, let us suppose, has heard 
from some unauthorized person that there are 
fairies — little magical creatures an inch high, up 
to all manner of delightful feats. He compre- 
hends the whole matter at half a word, feels that 
he had known it already, and half thinks that he 
sees one or two on his way home. He runs up to 
his mother and tells her about it; and has she 
ever seen fairies ? Alas ! His mother tells him 



LITER ATURE FOR CHILDREN. 109 

that the existence of such a being as a fairy is 
impossible. In old times, when the world was 
very ignorant and superstitious, they used to 
ascribe everything that happened to supernatural 
agency ; even the trifling daily accidents of one's 
life, such as tumbling down stairs, or putting the 
right shoe on the left foot, were thought or fan- 
cied to be the work of some mysterious power; 
and since ignorant people are very apt to imagine 
they see what they believe [proceeds this mother] 
instead of only believing what they see; and 
since, furthermore, ignorance disposes to exag- 
geration and thus to untruth, these people ended 
by asserting that they saw fairies. "Now, my 
child," continues the parent, "it would grieve me 
to see you the victim of such folly. Do not read 
fairy stories. They are not true to life ; they fill 
your mind with idle notions ; they cannot form 
your understanding, or aid you to do your work in 
the world. If you should happen to fall in with 
such fables, be careful as you read to bear in mind 
that they are pure inventions — pretty, sometimes, 
perhaps, but essentially frivolous, if not immoral. 
You have, however, thanks to the enlightened 
enterprise of writers and publishers, an endless as- 
sortment of juvenile books and periodicals which 



110 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

combine legitimate amusement with sound and 
trustworthy instruction. Here are stories about 
little children, just like yourself, who talk and act 
just as you do, and to whom nothing supernatural 
or outlandish ever happens ; and whose adven- 
tures, when you have read them, convey to you 
some salutary moral lesson. What more can you 
want? Yes, very likely 'Grimm's Tales' and 
1 The Arabian Nights ' may seem more attractive ; 
but in this world many harmful things put on an 
inviting guise, which deceives the inexperienced 
eye. May my child remember that all is not gold 
that glitters, and desire, not what is diverting 
merely, but what is useful and . . . and con- 
ventional ! " 

Let us admit that, things being as they are, it 
is necessary to develop the practical side of the 
child's nature, to ground him in moral principles, 
and to make him comprehend and fear — nomi- 
nally God, but really — society. But why, in 
addition to doing this, should we strangle the 
unpractical side of his nature, — the ideal, imag- 
inative, spiritual side, — the side which alone can 
determine his value or worthlessness in eternity? 
If our minds were visible as our bodies are, we 
should behold on every side of us, and in our own 



LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. Ill 

private looking-glasses, such abortions, cripples, 
and monstrosities as all the slums of Europe and 
the East could not parallel. We pretend to make 
little men and women out of our children, and we 
make little dwarfs and hobgoblins out of them. 
Moreover, we should not diminish even the prac- 
tical efficiency of the coming generation by reject- 
ing their unpractical side. Whether this boy's 
worldly destination be to clean a stable or to rep- 
resent his country at a foreign court, he will do 
his work all the better, instead of worse, for hav- 
ing been allowed freedom of expansion on the 
ideal plane. He will do it comprehensively, or 
as from above downward, instead of blindly, or as 
from below upward. To a certain extent, this 
position is very generally admitted by instructors 
nowadays; but the admission bears little or no 
fruit. The ideality and imagination which they 
have in mind are but a partial and feeble imitation 
of what is really signified by those terms. Ideality 
and imagination are themselves merely the symp- 
tom or expression of the faculty and habit of 
spiritual or subjective intuition — a faculty of par- 
amount value in life, though of late years, in the 
rush of rational knowledge and discovery, it has 
fallen into neglect. But it is by means of this 



112 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

faculty alone that the great religion of India was 
constructed — the most elaborate and seductive 
of all systems; and although as a faith Buddhism 
is also the most treacherous and dangerous attack 
ever made upon the immortal welfare of mankind, 
that circumstance certainly does not discredit or 
invalidate the claim to importance of spiritual 
intuition itself. It may be objected that spiritual 
intuition is a vague term. It undoubtedly be- 
longs to an abstruse region of psychology ; but its 
meaning for our present purpose is simply the act 
of testing questions of the moral consciousness by 
an inward touchstone of. truth, instead of by ex- 
ternal experience or information. That the exist- 
ence of such a touchstone should be ridiculed by 
those who are accustomed to depend for their be- 
lief upon palpable or logical evidence, goes with- 
out saying ; but, on the other hand, there need be 
no collision or argument on the point, since no 
question with which intuition is concerned can 
ever present itself to persons who pin their faith 
to the other sort of demonstration. The reverse 
of this statement is by no means true ; but it 
would lead us out of our present path to discuss 
the matter. 

Assuming, however, that intuition is possible, 



LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. 113 

it is evident that it should exist in children in an 
extremely pure, if not in its most potent state ; 
and to deny it opportunity of development might 
fairly be called a barbarity. It will hardly be 
disputed that children are an important element 
in society. Without them we should lose the 
memory of our youth, and all opportunity for the 
exercise of unselfish and disinterested affection. 
Life would become arid and mechanical to a de- 
gree now scarcely conceivable ; chastity and all 
the human virtues would cease to exist ; marriage 
would be an aimless and absurd transaction ; and 
the brotherhood of man, even in the nominal 
sense that it now exists, would speedily be ab- 
jured. Political economy and sociology neglect 
to make children an element in their arguments 
and deductions, and no small part of their error is 
attributable to that circumstance. But although 
children still are born, and all the world acknowl- 
edges their paramount moral and social value, the 
general tendency of what we are forced to call 
education at the present day is to shorten as 
much as possible the period of childhood. In 
America and Germany especially — but more in 
America than in Germany — children are urged 
and stimulated to " grow up " almost before they 



114 CONFESSIONS AND CEITICISMS. 

have been short-coated. That conceptions of 
order and discipline should be early instilled into 
them is proper enough ; but no other order and 
discipline seems to be contemplated by educators 
than the forcing them to stand and be stuffed full 
of indigestible and incongruous knowledge, than 
which proceeding nothing more disorderly could 
be devised. It looks as if we felt the. innocence 
and naturalness of our children to be a rebuke to 
us, and wished to do away with it in short order. 
There is something in the New Testament about 
offending the little ones, and the preferred alter- 
native thereto ; and really we are outraging not 
only the objective child, but the subjective one 
also — that in ourselves, namely, which is inno- 
cent and pure, and without which we had better 
not be at all. Now I do not mean to say that the 
only medicine that can cure this malady is legiti- 
mate children's literature ; wise parents are also 
very useful, though not perhaps so generally avail- 
able. My present contention is that the right 
sort of literature is an agent of great efficiency, 
and may be very easily come by. Children derive 
more genuine enjoyment and profit from a good 
book than most grown people are susceptible of: 
they see what is described, and themselves enact 



LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. 115 

and perfect the characters of the story as it goes 
along. 

Nor is it indispensable that literature of the 
kind required should forthwith be produced; a 
great deal, of admirable quality, is already on 
hand. There are a few great poems — Spenser's 
" Faerie Queene " is one — which no well regu- 
lated child should be without; but poetry in 
general is not exactly what we want. Children 
— healthy children — never have the poetic ge- 
nius ; but they are born mystics, and they have 
the sense of humor. The best way to speak to 
them is in prose, and the best kind of prose is the 
symbolic. The hermetic philosophers of the Mid- 
dle Ages are probably the authors of some of the 
best children's stories extant. In these tales, dis- 
guised beneath what is apparently the simplest 
and most artless flow of narrative, profound truths 
are discussed and explained. The child reads the 
narrative, and certainly cannot be accused of com- 
prehending the hidden philosophical problem ; yet 
that also has its share in charming him. The 
reason is partly that true symbolic or figurative 
writing is the simplest form known to literature. 
The simplest, that is to say, in outward form, — it 
may be indefinitely abstruse as to its inward con- 



116 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

tents. Indeed, the very cause of its formal sim- 
plicity is its interior profundity. The principle of 
hermetic writing was, as we know, to disguise 
philosophical propositions and results under a 
form of words which should ostensibly signify 
some very ordinary and trivial thing. It was a 
secret language, in the vocabulary of which mate- 
rial facts are used to represent spiritual truths. 
But it differed from ordinary secret language in 
this, that not only were the truths represented in 
the symbols, but the philosophical development 
of the truth, in its ramifications, was completely 
evolved under the cover of a logically consistent 
tale. This, evidently, is a far higher achievement 
of ingenuity than merely to string together a 
series of unrelated parts of speech, which, on 
being tested by the " key," shall discover the mes- 
sage or information really intended. It is, in fact, 
a practical application of the philosophical discov- 
ery, made by or communicated to the hermetic 
philosophers, that every material object in nature 
answers to or corresponds with a certain one or 
group of philosophical truths. Viewed in this 
light, the science of symbols or of correspondences 
ceases to be an arbitrary device, susceptible of 
alteration according to fancy, and avouches itself 



LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. 117 

an essential and consistent relation between the 
things of the mind and the things of the senses. 
There is a complete mental creation, answering 
to the material creation, not continuously evolved 
from it, but on a different or detached plane. 
The sun, — to take an example, — the source of 
light and heat, and thereby of physical nature, 
is in these fables always the symbol of God, of 
love and wisdom, by which the spirit of man 
is created. Light, then, answers to wisdom, 
and heat to love. And since all physical sub- 
stances are the result of the combined action 
of light and heat, we may easily perceive how 
these hermetic sages were enabled to use every 
physical object as a cloak of its corresponding 
philosophical truth, — with no other liability to 
error than might result from the imperfect condi- 
tion of their knowledge of physical laws. 

To return, however, to the children, I need 
scarcely remark that the cause of children's taking 
so kindly to hermetic writing is that it is actually 
a living writing ; it is alive in precisely the same 
way that nature, or man himself, is alive. Matter 
is dead ; life organizes and animates it. And all 
writing is essentially dead which is a mere trans- 
cript of fact, and is not inwardly organized and 



118 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

vivified by a spiritual significance. Children do 
not know what it is that makes a human being 
smile, move, and talk ; but they know that such a 
phenomenon is infinitely more interesting than a 
doll ; and they prove it by themselves supplying 
the doll with speech and motions out of their own 
minds, so as to make it as much like a real person 
as possible. In the same way, they do not per- 
ceive the philosophical truth which is the cause of 
existence of the hermetic fable ; but they find that 
fable far more juicy and substantial than the or- 
dinary narrative of e very-day facts, because, how- 
ever fine the surface of the latter may be, it has, 
after all, nothing but its surface to recommend it. 
It has no soul ; it is not alive ; and, though they can- 
not explain why, they feel the difference between 
that thin, fixed grimace and the changing smile of 
the living countenance. 

It would scarcely be practicable, however, to 
confine the children's reading to hermetic litera- 
ture; for not much of it is extant in its pure 
state. But it is hardly too much to say that all 
fairy stories, and derivations from these, trace 
their descent from an hermetic ancestry. They 
are often unaware of their genealogy; but the 
sparks of that primal vitality are in them. The 



LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. 119 

fairy is itself a symbol for the expression of a 
more complex and abstract idea ; but, once having 
come into existence, and being, not a pure symbol, 
but a hybrid between the symbol and that for 
which it stands, it presently began an independ- 
ent career of its own. The mediaeval imagina- 
tion went to work with it, found it singularly and 
delightfully plastic to its touch and requirements, 
and soon made it the centre of a new and charm- 
ing world, in which a whole army of graceful and 
romantic fancies, which are always in quest of an 
arena in which to disport themselves before the 
mind, found abundant accommodation and 
nourishment. The fairy land of mediaeval Chris- 
tianity seems to us the most satisfactory of all 
fairy lands, probably because it is more in accord 
with our genius and prejudices than those of the 
East ; and it fitted in so aptly with the popular 
mediaeval ignorance on the subject of natural 
phenomena, that it became actually an article of 
belief with the mass of men, who trembled at it 
while they invented it, in the most delicious im- 
aginable state of enchanted alarm. All this is 
prime reading for children; because, though it 
does not carry an orderly spiritual meaning within 
it, it is more spiritual than material, and is con- 



120 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

structed entirely according to the dictates of an 
exuberant and richly colored, but, nevertheless, in 
its own sphere, legitimate imagination. Indeed, 
fairy land, though as it were accidentally created, 
has the same permanent right to be that Beauty 
has; it agrees with a genuine aspect of human 
nature, albeit one much discountenanced just at 
present. The sequel to it, in which romantic 
human personages are accredited with fairy-like 
attributes, as in the " Faerie Queene," already al» 
luded to, is a step in the wrong direction, but not 
a step long enough to carry us altogether outside 
of the charmed circle. The child's instinct of 
selection being vast and cordial, — he will make a 
grain of true imagination suffuse and glorify a 
whole acre of twaddle, — we may with security 
leave him in that fantastic society. Moreover, 
some children being less imaginative than others, 
and all children being less imaginative in some 
moods and conditions than at other seasons, the 
elaborate compositions of Tasso, Cervantes, and 
the others, though on the boundary line between 
what is meat for babes and the other sort of 
meat, have also their abiding use. 

The " Arabian Nights " introduced us to the 
domain of the Oriental imagination, and has done 



LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. 121 

more than all the books of travel in the East to 
make us acquainted with the Asiatic character 
and its differences from our own. From what has 
already been said on the subject of spiritual intui- 
tion in relation to these races, one is prepared to 
find that all the Eastern literature that has any 
value is hermetic writing, and therefore, in so far, 
proper for children. But the incorrigible subtlety 
of the Oriental intellect has vitiated much of 
their symbology, and the sentiment of sheer 
wonder is stimulated rather than that of orderly 
imagination. To read the " Arabian Nights " or 
the " Bhagavad-Gita " is a sort of dissipation ; 
upon the unhackneyed mind of the child it leaves 
a reactionary sense of depression. The life which 
it embodies is distorted, over-colored, and excit- 
ing ; it has not the serene and balanced power of 
the Western productions. Moreover, these books 
were not written with the grave philosophic pur- 
pose that animated our own hermetic school ; it is 
rather a sort of jugglery practised with the sub- 
ject — an exercise of ingenuity and invention for 
their own sake. It indicates a lack of the feeling 
of responsibility on the writers' part, — a result, 
doubtless, of the prevailing fatalism that under- 
lies all their thought. It is not essentially whole- 



122 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

some, in short ; but it is immeasurably superior to 
the best of the productions called forth by our 
modern notions of what should be given to chil- 
dren to read. 

But I can do no more than touch upon this 
branch of the subject ; nor will it be possible to 
linger long over the department of our own liter- 
ature which came into being with "Robinson 
Crusoe." No theory as to children's books would 
be worth much attention which found itself 
obliged to exclude that memorable work. Al- 
though it submits in a certain measure to classi- 
fication, it is almost sui generis; no book of its 
kind, approaching it in merit, has ever been writ- 
ten. In what, then, does its fascination consist ? 
There is certainly nothing hermetic about it ; it is 
the simplest and most studiously matter-of-fact 
narrative of events, comprehensible without the 
slightest effort, and having no meaning that is not 
apparent on the face of it. And yet children, and 
grown people also, read it again and again, and 
cannot find it uninteresting. I think the phenom- 
enon may largely be due to the nature of the 
subject, which is really of primary and universal 
interest to mankind. It is the story of the strug- 
gle of man with wild and hostile nature, — in the 



LITERATURE EOR CHILDREN. 123 

larger sense an elementary theme, — his shifts, his 
failures, his perils, his fears, his hopes, his suc- 
cesses. The character of Robinson is so artfully 
generalized or universalized, and sympathy for 
him is so powerfully aroused and maintained, that 
the reader, especially the child reader, inevitably 
identifies himself with him, and feels his emotions 
and struggles as his own. The ingredient of sus- 
pense is never absent from the story, and the ab- 
sence of any plot prevents us from perceiving its 
artificiality. It is, in fact, a type of the history of 
the human race, not on the higher plane, but on 
the physical one ; the history of man's contest 
with and final victory over physical nature. The 
very simplicity and obviousness of the details 
give them grandeur and comprehensiveness : no 
part of man's character which his contact with 
nature can affect or develop is left untried in 
Robinson. He manifests in little all historical 
earthly experiences of the race ; such is the 
scheme of the book ; and its permanence in litera- 
ture is due to the sobriety and veracity with 
which that scheme is carried out. To speak suc- 
cinctly, it does for the body what the hermetic 
and cognate literature does for the soul ; and for 
the healthy man, the body is not less important 



124 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

than the soul in its own place and degree. It is 
not the work of the Creator, but it is contingent 
upon creation. 

But poor Robinson has been most unfortunate 
in his progeny, which at this day overrun the 
whole earth, and render it a worse wilderness 
than ever was the immortal Crusoe Island. Miss 
Edgeworth, indeed, might fairly pose as the most 
persistently malignant of all sources of error in 
the design of children's literature ; but it is to be 
feared that it was Defoe who first made her aware 
of the availability of her own venom. She foisted 
her prim and narrow moral code upon the com- 
monplace adventures of a priggish little boy and 
his companions ; and straightway the whole dreary 
and disastrous army of sectarians and dogmatists 
took up the cry, and have been ringing the lugu- 
brious changes on it ever since. There is really 
no estimating the mortal wrong that has been 
done to childhood by Maria Edgeworth's "Frank " 
and " The Parent's Assistant "; and, for my part, 
I derive a melancholy joy in availing myself of 
this opportunity to express my sense of my per- 
sonal share in the injury. I believe that my 
affection for the human race is as genuine 
as the average ; but I am sure it would have 



LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. 125 

been greater had Miss Eclgeworth never been 
born; and were I to come across any philo- 
sophical system whereby I could persuade my- 
self that she belonged to some other order 
of beings than the human, I should be strongly 
tempted to embrace that system on that ground 
alone. 

After what has been advanced in the preceding 
pages, it does not need that I should state how 
earnestly I deprecate the kind of literary food 
which we are now furnishing to the coming gen- 
eration in such sinister abundance. I am sure it 
is written and published with good and honorable 
motives ; but at the very best it can only do no 
harm. Moreover, however well intentioned, it is 
bad as literature ; it is poorly conceived and writ- 
ten, and, what is worse, it is saturated with affec- 
tation. For an impression prevails that one needs 
to talk down to children; — to keep them con- 
stantly reminded that they are innocent, ignorant 
little things, whose consuming wish it is to be 
good and go to Sunday-school, and who will be 
all gratitude and docility to whomsoever provides 
them with the latest fashion of moral sugar- 
plums ; whereas, so far as my experience and in- 
formation goes, children are the most formidable 



126 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

literary critics in the world. Matthew Arnold 
himself has not so sure an instinct for what is 
sound and good in a book as any intelligent little 
boy or girl of eight years old. They judge abso- 
lutely ; they are hampered by no comparisons or 
relative considerations. They cannot give chapter 
and verse for their opinion ; but about the opinion 
itself there is no doubt. They have no theories ; 
they judge in a white light. They have no prej- 
udices nor traditions; they come straight from 
the simple source of life. But, on the other hand, 
they are readily hocussed and made morbid by 
improper drugs, and presently, no doubt, lose 
their appetite for what is wholesome. Now, we 
cannot hope that an army of hermetic philos- 
ophers or Mother-Gooses will arise at need 
and remedy all abuses; but at least we might 
refrain from moralizing and instruction, and, 
if we can do nothing more, confine ourselves 
to plain stories of adventure, say, with no ulte- 
rior object whatever. There still remains the 
genuine literature of the past to draw upon; 
but let us beware, as we would of forgery and 
perjury, of serving it up, as has been done too 
often, medicated and modified to suit the foolish 
dogmatism of the moment. Hans Christian 



LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. 127 

Andersen was the last writer of children's 
stories, properly so called; though, considering 
how well married to his muse he was, it is a 
wonder as well as a calamity that he left no 
descendants. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE MOEAL AIM IN FICTION". 

The producers of modern fiction, who have ac- 
quiesced more or less completely in the theory of 
art for art's sake, are not, perhaps, aware that a 
large class of persons still exist who hold fiction 
to be unjustifiable, save in so far as the author has 
it at heart not only (or chiefly) to adorn the tale, 
but also (and first of all) to point the moral. The 
novelist, in other words, should so mould the 
characters and shape the plot of his imaginary 
drama as to vindicate the wisdom and integrity of 
the Decalogue : if he fail to do this, or if he do 
the opposite of this, he deserves not the counte- 
nance of virtuous and God-fearing persons. 

Doubtless it should be evident to every sane and 
impartial mind, whether orthodox or agnostic, that 
an art which runs counter to the designs of God 
toward the human race, or to the growth of the 
sentiment of universal human brotherhood, must 
sooner or later topple down from its fantastic and 

128 



THE MORAL AIM IN FICTION. 129 

hollow foundation. " Hitch your wagon to a star," 
says Emerson ; " do not lie and steal : no god will 
help." And although, for the sake of his own 
private interests of the moment, a man will oc- 
casionally violate the moral law, yet, with man- 
kind at large, the necessity of vindicating the 
superior advantages of right over wrong is ac- 
knowledged not only in the interests of civilized 
society, but because we feel that, however hostile 
" goodness " may seem to be to my or your per- 
sonal and temporary aims, it still remains the only 
wholesome and handsome choice for the race at 
large : and therefore do we, as a race, refuse to 
tolerate — on no matter how plausible an artistic 
plea — any view of human life which either pro- 
fesses indifference to this universal sentiment, or 
perversely challenges it. 

The true ground of dispute, then, does not lie 
here. The art which can stoop to be " procuress 
to the lords of hell," is art no longer. But, on the 
other hand, it would be difficult to point to any 
great work of art, generally acknowledged to be 
such, which explicitly concerns itself with the vin- 
dication of any specific moral doctrine. The story 
in which the virtuous are rewarded for their vir- 
tue, and the evil punished for their wickedness, 



130 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

fails, somehow, to enlist our full sympathy; it 
falls flatly on the ear of the mind ; it does not 
stimulate thought. It does not satisfy ; we fancy 
that something still remains to be said, or, if this 
be all, then it was hardly worth saying. The real 
record of life — its terror, its beauty, its pathos, 
its depth — seems to have been missed. We may 
admit that the tale is in harmony with what we 
have been taught ought to happen; but the les- 
sons of our private experience have not authenti- 
cated our moral formulas ; we have seen the evil 
exalted and the good brought low; and we inevi- 
tably desire that our " fiction " shall tell us, not 
what ought to happen, but what, as a matter of 
fact, does happen. To put this a little differently: 
we feel that the God of the orthodox moralist is 
not the God of human nature. He is nothing but 
the moralist himself in a highly sublimated state, 
but betraying, in spite of that sublimation, a fatal 
savor of human personality. The conviction that 
any man — George Washington, let us say — is a 
morally unexceptionable man, does not in the 
least reconcile us to the idea of God being an in- 
definitely exalted counterpart of Washington. 
Such a God would be " most tolerable, and not to 
be endured"; and the more exalted he was, the 



THE MOKAL AIM IN FICTION. 131 

less endurable would he be. In short, man in- 
stinctively refuses to regard the literal inculcation 
of the Decalogue as the final word of God to the 
human race, and much less to the individuals of 
that race; and when he finds a story-teller proceed- 
ing upon the contrary assumption, he is apt to put 
that story-teller down as either an ass or a hum- 
bug. As for art — if the reader happen to be 
competent to form an opinion on that phase of 
the matter — he will generally find that the art 
dwindles in direct proportion as the moralized 
deity expatiates; in fact, that they are incom- 
patible. And he will also confess (if he have the 
courage of his opinions) that, as between moral- 
ized deity and true .art, his choice is heartily and 
unreservedly for the latter. 

I do not apprehend that the above remarks, 
fairly interpreted, will encounter serious opposi- 
tion from either party to the discussion ; and yet, so 
far as I am aware, neither party has as yet availed 
himself of the light which the conclusion throws 
upon the nature of art itself. It should be ob- 
vious, however, that upon a true definition of art 
the whole argument must ultimately hinge : for 
we can neither deny that art exists, nor affirm 
that it can exist inconsistently with a recognition 



132 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

of a divinely beneficent purpose in creation. It 
•must, therefore, in some way be an expression or 
reflection of that purpose. But in what does the 
purpose in question essentially consist ? 

Broadly speaking — for it would be impossible 
within the present limits to attempt a full analysis 
of the subject — it may be considered as a gradual 
and progressive Purification, not of this or that 
particular individual in contradistinction to his 
fellows, but of human nature as an entirety. The 
evil into which all men are born, and of which the 
Decalogue, or conscience, makes us aware, is not 
an evil voluntarily contracted on our part, but is 
inevitable to us as the creation of a truly 
infinite love and wisdom. It is, in fact, our 
characteristic nature as animals : and it is only 
because we are not only animal, but also and 
above all human, that we are enabled to recog- 
nize it as evil instead of good. We absolve 
the cat, the dog, the wolf, and the lion from 
any moral responsibility for their deeds, because 
we feel them to be deficient in conscience, which, 
is our own divinely bestowed gift and privilege, 
and which has been defined as the spirit of 
God in the created nature, seeking to become the 
creature's own spirit. Now, the power to correct 



THE MORAL AIM IN FICTION. 133 

this evil does not abide in us as individuals, nor 
will a literal adherence to the moral law avail 
to purify any mother's son of us. Conscience 
always says " Do not," — never " Do " ; and 
obedience to it neither can give us a personal 
claim on God's favor nor was it intended to do 
so: its true function is to keep us innocent, so 
that we may not individually obstruct the accom- 
plishment of the divine ends toward us as a race. 
Our nature not being the private possession of any 
one of us, but the impersonal substratum of us all, 
it follows that it cannot be redeemed piecemeal, but 
only as a whole ; and, manifestly, the only Being 
capable of effecting such redemption is not Peter^ 
or Paul, or George Washington, or any other atom- 
ic exponent of that nature, be he who he may; 
but He alone whose infinitude is the complement 
of our finiteness, and whose gradual descent into 
human nature (figured in Scripture under the 
symbol of the Incarnation) is even now being ac- 
complished — as any one may perceive who reads 
aright the progressive enlightenment of con- 
science and intellect which history, through many 
vicissitudes, displays. We find, therefore, that art 
is, essentially, the imaginative expression of a 
divine life in man. Art depends for its worth 



134 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

and veracity, not upon its adherence to literal 
fact, but upon its perception and portrayal of the 
underlying truth, of which fact is but the phenom- 
enal and imperfect shadow. And it can have 
nothing to do with personal vice or virtue, in the 
way either of condemning the one or vindicating 
the other ; it can only treat them as elements in 
its picture — as factors in human destiny. For 
the notion commonly entertained that the 
practice of virtue gives us a claim upon the 
Divine Exchequer (so to speak), and the habit of 
acting virtuously for the sake of maintaining our 
credit in society, and ensuring our prosperity in 
the next world, — in so thinking and acting we 
misapprehend the true inwardness of the matter. 
To cultivate virtue because its pays, no matter 
what the sort of coin in which payment is looked 
for, is to be the victims of a lamentable delusion. 
For such virtue makes each man jealous of his 
neighbor ; whereas the aim of Providence is to 
bring about the broadest human fellowship. A 
man's physical body separates him from other 
men ; and this fact disposes him to the error that 
his nature is also a separate possession, and that 
he can only be " good " by denying himself. But 
the only goodness that is really good is a spon- 



THE MOEAL AIM IN FICTION. 135 

taneous and impersonal evolution, and this occurs, 
not where self-denial has been practised, but 
only where a man feels himself to be absolutely 
on the same level of desert or non-desert as are 
the mass of his fellow-creatures. There is no use 
in obeying the commandments, unless it be done, 
not to make one's self more deserving than 
another of God's approbation, but out of love for 
goodness and truth in themselves, apart from any 
personal considerations. The difference between 
true religion and formal religion is that the first 
leads us to abandon all personal claims to sal- 
vation, and to care only for the salvation of 
humanity as a whole ; whereas the latter stim- 
ulates us to practise outward self-denial, in order 
that our real self may be exalted. Such self- 
denial results not in humility, but in spiritual 
pride. 

In no other way than this, it seems to me, can 
art and morality be brought into harmony. 
Art bears witness to the presence in us of some- 
thing purer and loftier than anything of which we 
can be individually conscious. Its complete ex- 
pression we call inspiration; and he who is the 
subject of the inspiration can account no better 
than any one else for the result which art accom- 



136 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

plishes through him. The perfect poem is found, 
not made ; the mind which utters it did not in- 
vent it. Art takes all nature and all knowledge 
for her province ; but she does not leave it as she 
found it; by the divine necessity that is upon her, 
she breathes a soul into herfmaterials, and organ- 
izes chaos into form. But never, under any cir- 
cumstances, does she deign to minister to our 
selfish personal hope or greed. She shows us how 
to love our neighbor, never ourselves. Shak- 
speare, Homer, Phidias, Raphael, were no Phar- 
isees — at least in so far as they were artists ; nor 
did any one ever find in their works any coun- 
tenance for that inhuman assumption — "I am ho- 
lier than thou ! " In the world's darkest hours, 
art has sometimes stood as the sole witness of the 
nobler life that was in eclipse. Civilizations arise 
and vanish ; forms of religion hold sway and are 
forgotten; learning and science advance and gather 
strength ; but true art was as great and as beau- 
tiful three thousand years ago as it is to-day. We 
are prone to confound the man with the artist, 
and to suppose that he is artistic by possession 
and inheritance, instead of exclusively by dint 
of what he does. No artist worthy the name ever 
dreams of putting himself into his work, but 



THE MORAL AIM IN FICTION. 137 

only what is infinitely distinct from and other 
than himself. It is not the poet who brings forth 
the poem, but the poem that begets the poet ; it 
makes him, educates him, creates in him the 
poetic faculty. Those whom we call great men, 
the heroes of history, are but the organs of great 
crises and opportunities: as Emerson has said, 
they are the most indebted men. In themselves 
they are not great ; there is no ratio between their 
achievements and them. Our judgment is mis- 
led; we do not discriminate between the divine 
purpose and the human instrument. When we 
listen to Napoleon fretting his soul away at Elba, 
or to Carlyle wrangling with his wife at Chelsea, 
we are shocked at the discrepancy between the 
lofty public performance and the petty domestic 
shortcoming. Yet we do wrong to blame them ; 
the nature of which they are examples is the same 
nature that is shared also by the publican and 
the sinner. 

Instead, therefore, of saying that art should be 
moral, we should rather say that all true morality 
is art — that art is the test of morality. To at- 
tempt to make this heavenly Pegasus draw the 
sordid plough of our selfish moralistic prejudices 
is a grotesque subversion of true order. Why 



138 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

should the novelist make believe that the wicked 
are punished and the good are rewarded in this 
world? Does he not know, on the contrary, that 
whatsoever is basest in our common life tends 
irresistibly to the highest places, and that the 
selfish element in our nature is on the side of 
public order ? Evil is at present a more efficient 
instrument of order (because an interested one) 
than good ; and the novelist who makes this appear 
will do a far greater and more lasting benefit 
to humanity than he who follows the cut-and- 
dried artificial programme of bestowing crowns 
on the saint and whips of scorpions on the 
sinner. 

As a matter of fact, I repeat, the best influences 
of the best literature have never been didactic, 
and there is no reason to believe they ever will 
be. The only semblance of didacticism which 
can enter into literature is that which conveys 
such lessons as may be learned from sea* and sky, 
mountain and valley, wood and stream, bird and 
beast; and from the broad human life of races, 
nations, and firesides ; a lesson that is not obvious 
and superficial, but so profoundly hidden in the 
creative depths as to emerge only to an appre- 
hension equally profound. For the chatter and 



THE MORAL AIM IN FICTION. 139 

affectation of sense disturb and offend that inward 
spiritual ear which, in the silent recesses of 
meditation, hears the prophetic murmur of the 
vast ocean of human nature that flows within us 
and around us all. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE MAKER OF MANY BOOKS. 

During the winter of 1879, when I was in 
London, it was my fortune to attend a social 
meeting of literary men at the rooms of a certain 
eminent publisher. The rooms were full of to- 
bacco-smoke and talk, amid which were discerni- 
ble, on all sides, the figures and faces of men more 
or less renowned in the world of books. Most 
noticeable among these personages was a broad- 
shouldered, sturdy man, of middle height, with a 
ruddy countenance, and snow-white tempestuous 
beard and hair. He wore large, gold-rimmed 
spectacles, but his eyes were black and brilliant, 
and looked at his interlocutor with a certain 
genial fury of inspection. He seemed to be in 
a state of some excitement ; he spoke volubly 
and almost boisterously, and his voice was full- 
toned and powerful, though pleasant to the ear. 
He turned himself, as he spoke, with a burly 
briskness, from one side to another, addressing 

140 



THE MAKER OF MANY BOOKS. 141 

himself first to this auditor and then to that, his 
words bursting forth from beneath his white 
moustache with such an impetus of hearty breath 
that it seemed as if all opposing arguments must 
be blown quite away. Meanwhile he flourished in 
the air an ebony walking-stick, with much vigor 
of gesticulation, and narrowly missing, as it ap- 
peared, the pates of his listeners. He was clad in 
evening dress, though the rest of the company 
was, for the most part, in mufti ; and he was an 
exceedingly fine-looking old gentleman. At the 
first glance, you would have taken him to be some 
civilized and modernized Squire Western, nour- 
ished with beef and ale, and roughly hewn out of 
the most robust and least refined variety of human 
clay. Looking at him more narrowly, however, 
you would have reconsidered this judgment. 
Though his general contour and aspect were 
massive and sturdy, the lines of his features were 
delicately cut; his complexion was remarkably 
pure and fine, and his face was susceptible of very 
subtle and sensitive changes of expression. Here 
was a man of abundant physical strength and 
vigor, no doubt, but carrying within him a nature 
more than commonly alert and impressible. His 
organization, though thoroughly healthy, was both 



142 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

complex and high-wrought ; his character was sim- 
ple and straightforward to a fault, but he was ab- 
normally conscientious, and keenly alive to others' 
opinion concerning him. It might be thought 
that he was overburdened with self-esteem, and 
unduly opinionated ; but, in fact, he was but over- 
anxious to secure the good-will and agreement of 
all with whom he came in contact. There was 
some peculiarity in him — some element or bias 
in his composition that made him different from 
other men ; but, on the other hand, there was an 
ardent solicitude to annul or reconcile this differ- 
ence, and to prove himself to be, in fact, of abso- 
lutely the same cut and quality as all the rest of 
the world. Hence he was in a demonstrative, ex- 
pository, or argumentative mood ; he could not sit 
quiet in the face of a divergence between himself 
and his associates ; he was incorrigibly strenuous 
to obliterate or harmonize the irreconcilable points 
between him and others ; and since these points 
remained irreconcilable, he remained in a constant 
state of storm and stress on the subject. 

It was impossible to help liking such a man at 
first sight ; and I believe that no man in London 
society was more generally liked than Anthony 
Trollope. There was something pathetic in his 



THE MAKER OF MANY BOOKS. 143 

attitude as above indicated; and a fresh and boy- 
ish quality always invested him. His artlessness 
was boyish, and so were his acuteness and his 
transparent but somewhat belated good-sense. 
He was one of those rare persons who not only 
have no reserves, but who can afford to dispense 
with them. After he had shown you all he had in 
him, you would have seen nothing that was not 
gentlemanly, honest, and clean. He was a quick- 
tempered man, and the ardor and hurry of his tem- 
perament made him seem more so than he really 
was; but he was never more angry than he was 
forgiving and generous. He was hurt by little 
things, and little things pleased him ; he was sus- 
picious and perverse, but in a manner that rather 
endeared him to you than otherwise. Altogether, 
to a casual acquaintance, who knew nothing of 
his personal history, he was something of a para- 
dox — an entertaining contradiction. The publi- 
cation of his autobiography explained many things 
in his character that were open to speculation; 
and, indeed, the book is not only the most inter- 
esting and amusing that its author has ever writ- 
ten, but it places its subject before the reader 
more completely and comprehensively than most 
autobiographies do. This, however, is due much 



144 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

less to any direct effort or intention on the writer's 
part, than to the unconscious self-revelation which 
meets the reader on every page. No narrative 
could be simpler, less artificial; and yet, every- 
where, we read between the lines, and, so to 
speak, discover Anthony Trollope in spite of his 
efforts to discover himself to us. 

The truth appears to be that the youthful Trol- 
lope, like a more famous fellow-novelist, began 
the world with more kicks than half-pence. His 
boyhood, he affirms, was as unhappy as that of a 
young gentleman could well be, owing to a mix- 
ture of poverty and gentle standing on his father's 
part, and, on his own, to " an utter lack of juve- 
nile manhood" — whatever that may be. His 
father was a lawyer, who frightened away all his 
clients by his outrageous temper, and who encoun- 
tered one mischance after another until he landed 
himself and his family in open bankruptcy ; from 
which they were rescued, partly by death, which 
carried away four of them (including the old gen- 
tleman), and partly by Mrs. Trollope, who, at fifty 
years of age, brought out her famous book on 
America, and continued to make a fair income by 
literature (as she called it) until 1856, when, 
being seventy-six years old, and having produced 



THE MAKER OF MANY BOOKS. 145 

one hundred and fourteen volumes, she permitted 
herself to retire. This extraordinary lady, in her 
youth, cherished what her son calls "an emotional 
dislike to tyrants " ; but when her American ex- 
perience had made her acquainted with some of 
the seamy aspects of democracy, and especially 
after the aristocracy of her own country had be- 
gun to patronize her, she confessed the error of her 
early way, "and thought that archduchesses were 
sweet." But she was certainly a valiant and inde- 
fatigable woman, — " of all the people I have ever 
known," says her son, "the most joyous, or, at any 
rate, the most capable of joy " ; and he adds that 
her, best novels were written in 1834-35, when 
her husband and four of her six children were 
dying upstairs of consumption, and she had to di- 
vide her time between nursing them and writing. 
Assuredly, no son of hers need apprehend the 
reproach — "Tydides melior matre" ; though An- 
thony, and his brother Thomas Adolphus, must, 
together, have run her pretty hard. The former 
remarks, with that terrible complacency in an aw- 
ful fact which is one of his most noticeable and 
astounding traits, that the three of them " wrote 
more books than were probably ever before pro- 
duced by a single family." The existence of a 



146 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

few more such families could be consistent only 
with a generous enlargement of the British Mu- 
seum. 

The elder Trollope was a scholar, and to make 
scholars of his sons was one of his ruling ideas. 
Poor little Anthony endured no less than twelve 
mortal years of schooling — from the time he was 
seven until he was nineteen — and declares that, 
in all that time, he does not remember that he 
ever knew a lesson. " I have been flogged," he 
says, "oftener than any other human being." 
Nay, his troubles began before his school-days ; 
for his father used to make him recite his infantile 
tasks to him while he was shaving, and obliged 
him to sit with his head inclined in such a manner 
" that he could pull my hair without stopping his 
razor or dropping his shaving-brush." This is a 
depressing picture ; and there are plenty more like 
it. Dr. Butler, the master of Harrow, meeting 
the poor little draggletail urchin in the yard, de- 
sired to know, in awful accents, how so dirty a 
boy dared to show himself near the school ! "He 
must have known me, had he seen me as he was 
wont to see me, for he was in the habit of flogging 
me constantly. Perhaps," adds his victim, " he 
did not recognize me by my face ! " But it is 



THE MAKER OF MANY BOOKS. 147 

comforting to leam, in another place, that justice 
overtook the oppressor. " Dr. Butler only lived 
to be Dean of Peterborough ; but his successor 
(Dr. Longley) became Archbishop of Canter- 
bury." There is a great deal of Trollopian moral- 
ity in the fate of these two men, the latter of 
whom " could not have said anything ill-natured 
if he had tried." 

Black care, however, continued to sit behind 
the horseman with harrowing persistence. A cer- 
tain Dr. Drury (another schoolmaster) punished 
him on suspicion of "some nameless horror," of 
which the unfortunate youngster happened to be 
innocent. When, afterward, the latter fact began 
to be obvious, " he whispered to me half a word 
that perhaps he had been wrong. But, with a 
boy's stupid slowness, I said nothing, and he had 
not the courage to carry reparation farther." 
The poverty of Anthony's father deprived the 
boy of all the external advantages that might 
have enabled him to take rank with his fellows : 
and his native awkwardness and sensitiveness 
widened the breach. " I had no friend to whom 
I could pour out my sorrows. I was big, awk- 
ward and ugly, and, I have no doubt, skulked 
about in a most unattractive manner. Something 



148 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

of the disgrace of my school-da}^ has clung to me 
all through life. When I. have been claimed as 
school-fellow by some of those many hundreds 
who were with me either at Harrow or at Win- 
chester, I have felt that I had no right to talk of 
things from most of which I was kept in estrange- 
ment. I was never a coward, but to make a 
stand against three hundred tyrants required a 
moral courage which I did not possess." Once, 
however, they pushed him too far, and he was 
driven to rebellion. " And then came a great 
fight — at the end of which my opponent had to 
be taken home to be cured." And then he utters 
the characteristic wish that some one, of the many 
who witnessed this combat, may still be left alive 
" who will be able to say that, in claiming this 
solitary glory of my school-days, I am making 
no false boast." The lonely, lugubrious little 
champion ! One would almost have been willing 
to have received from him a black eye and a 
bloody nose, only to comfort his sad heart. It is 
delightful to imagine the terrific earnestness of 
that solitary victory : and I would like to know 
what boy it was (if any) who lent the unpopular 
warrior a knee and wiped his face. 

After he got through his school-days, his family 



THE MAKER OF MANY BOOKS. 149 

being then abroad, he had an offer of a commis- 
sion in an Austrian cavalry regiment; and he 
might have been a major-general or field-marshal 
at this day had his schooling made him acquaint- 
ed with the French and German languages. Be- 
ing, however, entirely ignorant of these, he was 
obliged to study them in order to his admission ; 
and while he was thus employed, he received 
news of a vacant clerkship in the General Post- 
Office, with the dazzling salary of £90 a year. 
Needless to say that he jumped at such an open- 
ing, seeing before him a vision of a splendid civil 
and social career, at something over twenty 
pounds a quarter. But London, even fifty years 
ago, was a more expensive place than Anthony 
imagined. Moreover, the boy was alone in the 
wilderness of the city, with no one to advise or 
guide him. The consequence was that these lat- 
ter days of his youth were as bad or worse than 
the beginning. In reviewing his plight at this 
period, he observes : " I had passed my life where 
I had seen gay things, but had never enjoyed 
them. There was no house in which I could ha- 
bitually see a lady's face or hear a lady's voice. 
At the Post-Office I got credit for nothing, and 
was reckless. I hated my work, and, more than 



150 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

all, I hated my idleness. Borrowings of money, 
sometimes absolute want, and almost constant 
misery, followed as a matter of course. I had a 
full conviction that my life was taking me down 
to the lowest pits — a feeling that I had been 
looked upon as an evil, an encumbrance, a useless 
thing, a creature of whom those connected with 
me had to be ashamed. Even my few friends 
were half-ashamed of me. I acknowledge the 
weakness of a great desire to be loved — a strong 
wish to be popular. No one had ever been less 
so." Under these circumstances, he remarks 
that, although, no doubt, if the mind be strong 
enough, the temptation will not prevail, yet he 
is fain to admit that the temptation prevailed 
with him. He did not sit at home, after his re- 
turn from the office, in the evening, to drink tea 
and read, but tramped out in the streets, and 
tried to see life and be jolly on X90 a year. He 
borrowed four pounds of a money-lender, to aug- 
ment his resources, and found, after a few years, 
that he had paid him two hundred pounds for the 
accommodation. He met with every variety of 
absurd and disastrous adventure. The mother of 
a young woman with whom he had had an 
innocent flirtation in the country appeared one 



THE MAKER OF MANY BOOKS. 151 

day at his desk in the office, and called ont 
before all the clerks, " Anthony Trollope, 
when are you going to marry my daughter?" 
On another occasion a sum of money was mis- 
sing from the table of the director. Anthony 
was summoned. The director informed him of 
the loss — " and, by G — ! " he continued, 
thundering his fist down on the table, " no one 
has been in the room but you and I." " Then, 
by G — ! " cried Anthony, thundering his fist 
down upon something, "you have taken it!" 
This was very well ; but the thing which An- 
thony had thumped happened to be, not a table, 
but a movable desk with an inkstand on it, and 
the ink flew up and deluged the face and shirt- 
front of the enraged director. Still another ad- 
venture was that of the Queen of Saxony and the 
Half-Crown ; but the reader must investigate 
these matters for himself. 

So far there has been nothing looking toward 
the novel-writer. But now we learn that from 
the age of fifteen to twenty-six Anthony kept a 
journal, which, he says, " convicted me of folly, 
ignorance, indiscretion, idleness, and conceit, but 
habituated me to the rapid use of pen and ink, 
and taught me how to express myself with facil- 



152 CONFESSIONS AND CKITICISMS. 

itv." In addition to this, and more to the pur- 
pose, he had formed an odd habit. Living, as he 
was forced to do, so much to himself, if not by 
himself, he had to play, not with other boys, but 
with himself; and his favorite play was to con- 
ceive a tale, or series of fictitious events, and to 
carry it on, day after day, for months together, in 
his mind. "Nothing impossible was ever in- 
troduced, or violently improbable. I was my own 
hero, but I never became a king or a duke, still 
less an Antinoiis, or six feet high. But I was a 
very clever person, and beautiful young women 
used to be very fond of me. I learned in this 
way to live in a world outside the world of my 
own material life." This is pointedly, even touch- 
ingly, characteristic. Never, to the day of his 
death, did Mr. Trollope either see or imagine any- 
thing impossible, or violently improbable, in the 
world. This mortal plane of things never dis- 
solved before his gaze and revealed the mysteries 
of absolute Being ; his heavens were never rolled 
up as a scroll, and his earth had no bubbles as the 
water hath. He took things as he found them ; 
and he never found them out. But if the light 
that never was on sea or land does not illuminate 
the writings of Mr. Trollope, there is generally 



THE MAKER OF MANY* BOOKS. 153 

plenty of that other kind of light with which, 
after all, the average reader is more familiar, and 
which not a few, perhaps, prefer to the transcen- 
dental lustre. There is no modern novelist who 
has more clearly than Trollope defined to his own 
apprehension his own literary capabilities and limi- 
tations. He is thoroughly acquainted with both his 
fortes and his foibles ; and so sound is his good sense, 
that he is seldom beguiled into toiling with futile 
ambition after effects that are beyond him. His 
proper domain is a sufficiently wide one ; he is 
inimitably at home here ; and when he invites 
us there to visit him, we may be sure of getting 
good and wholesome entertainment. The writer's 
familiarity with his characters communicates itself 
imperceptibly to the reader; there are no difficult 
or awkward introductions ; the toning of the pict- 
ure (to use the painter's phrase) is unexception- 
able ; and if it be rather tinted than colored, the 
tints are handled in a workmanlike manner. 
Again, few English novelists seem to possess so 
sane a comprehension of the modes of life and 
thought of the British aristocracy as Trollope. 
He has not only made a study of them from the 
observer's point of view, but he has reasoned them 
out intellectually. The figures are not vividly de- 



154 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

fined ; the realism is applied to events rather than 
to personages: we have the scene described for 
us but we do not look upon it. We should 
not recognize his characters if we saw them ; 
but if we were told who they were, we should 
know, from their author's testimony, what were 
their characteristic traits and how they would 
act under given circumstances. The logical 
sequence of events is carefully maintained; 
nothing happens, either for good or for evil, 
other than might befall under the dispen- 
sations of a Providence no more unjust, and 
no more far-sighted, than Trollope himself. 
There is a good deal of the a priori principle in 
his method ; he has made up his mind as to cer- 
tain fundamental data, and thence develops or 
explains whatever complication comes up for set- 
tlement. But to range about unhampered by any 
theories, concerned only to examine all phenom- 
ena, and to report thereupon, careless of any con- 
siderations save those of artistic propriety, would 
have been vanity and striving after wind to Trol- 
lope, and derivatively so, doubtless, to his readers. 
Considered in the abstract, it is a curious ques- 
tion what makes his novels interesting. The 
reader knows, in a sense, just what is in store for 



THE MAKEE OF MANY BOOKS. 155 

him, — or, rather, what is not. There will be no 
astonishment, no curdling horror, no consuming 
suspense. There may be, perhaps, as many 
murders, forgeries, foundlings, abductions, and 
missing wills, in Trollope's novels as in any 
others ; but they are not told about in a manner to 
alarm us ; we accept them philosophically ; there 
are paragraphs in our morning paper that excite 
us more. And yet they are narrated with art, 
and with dramatic effect. They are interesting, 
but not uncourteously — not exasperatingly so; 
and the strangest part of it is that the introduc- 
tory and intermediate passages are no less inter- 
esting, under Trollope's treatment, than are the 
murders and forgeries. Not only does he never 
offend the modesty of nature, — he encourages her 
to be prudish, and trains her to such evenness and 
severity of demeanor that we never know when 
we have had enough of her. His touch is emi- 
nently civilizing ; everything, from the episodes to 
the sentences, moves without hitch or creak : we 
never have to read a paragraph twice, and we are 
seldom sorry to have read it once. 

Amusingly characteristic of Trollope is his 
treatment of his villains. His attitude toward 
them betrays no personal uncharitableness or 



156 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

animosity, but the villain has a bad time of it just 
the same. Trollope places upon him a large, benev- 
olent, but unyielding forefinger, and says to us : 
" Remark, if you please, how this inferior reptile 
squirms when pressure is applied to him. I will 
now augment the pressure. You observe that the 
squirmings increase in energy and complexity. 
Now, if you please, I will bear down yet a 
little harder. Do not be alarmed, madam ; the 
reptile undoubtedly suffers, but the spectacle 
may do us some good, and you may trust 
me not to let him do you any harm. There ! — 
Yes, evisceration by means of pressure is be- 
yond question painful ; but every one must have 
observed the benevolence of my forefinger during 
the operation ; and I fancy even the subject of the 
experiment (were he in a condition to express his 
sentiments) would have admitted as much. 
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I shall have 
the pleasure of meeting you again very shortly. 
John, another reptile, please ! " Upon the whole, 
it is much to Trollope's credit that he wrote 
somewhere about fifty long novels ; and to the ' 
credit of the English people that they paid him 
three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for these 
novels — and read them ! 



THE MAKER OF MANY BOOKS. 157 

But his success as a man of letters was still 
many years in the future. After seven years in 
the London office, he went to Ireland as assistant 
surveyor, and thenceforward he began to enjoy 
his business, and to get on in it. He was paid 
sixpence a mile, and he would ride forty miles a 
day. He rode to hounds, incidentally, whenever 
he got a chance, and he kept up the practice, with 
enthusiasm, to within a few years of his death. 
" It will, I think, be accorded to me," he says, 
" that I have ridden hard. I know very little 
about hunting ; I am blind, very heavy, and I am 
now old ; but I ride with a boy's energy, hating 
the roads, and despising young men who ride 
them ; and I feel that life cannot give me any- 
thing better than when I have gone through a 
long run to the finish, keeping a place, not of glory, 
but of credit, among my juniors." Riding, work- 
ing, having a jolly time, and gradually increasing 
his income, he lived until 1842, when he became 
engaged ; and he was married on June 11, 1844. 
" I ought to name that happy day," he declares, 
" as the commencement of my better life." It 
was at about this date, also, that he began and 
finished, not without delay and procrastination, 
his first novel. Curiously enough, he affirms that 



158 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

lie did not doubt his own intellectual sufficiency 
to write a readable novel: "What I did doubt 
was my own industry, and the chances of a 
market." Never, surely, was self-distrust more 
unfounded. As for the first novel, he sent it to 
his mother, to dispose of as best she could ; and it 
never brought him anything, except a perception 
that it was considered by his friends to be "an 
unfortunate aggravation of the family disease." 
During the ensuing ten years, this view seemed 
to be not unreasonable, for, in all that time, 
though he worked hard, he earned by literature 
no more than £55. But, between 1857 and 1860, 
he received for various novels, from £100 to 
£1000 each; and thereafter, £3000 or more was 
his regular price for a story in three volumes. 
As he maintained his connection with the post- 
office until 1867, he was in receipt of an income 
of £4500, "of which I spent two-thirds and put 
by one." We should be doing an injustice to 
Mr. Trollope to omit these details, which he gives 
so frankly; for, as he early informs us, "my first 
object in taking to literature was to make an 
income on which I and those belonging to me 
might live in comfort." Nor will he let us forget 
that novel-writing, to him, was not so much an 



THE MAKER OF MANY BOOKS. 159 

art, or even a profession, as a trade, in which all 
that can be ashed of a man is that he shall be 
honest and punctual, turning out good average 
work, and the more the better. " The great 
secret consists in " — in what ? — wiry, " in ac- 
knowledging myself to be bound to rules of labor 
similar to those which an artisan or mechanic is 
forced to obey." There may be, however, other 
incidental considerations. " I have ever thought 
of myself as a preacher of sermons, and my pulpit 
as one I could make both salutary and agreeable 
to my audience " ; and he tells us that he has 
used some of his novels for the expression of his 
political and social convictions. Again — " The 
novelist must please, and he must teach ; a good 
novel should be both realistic and sensational in 
the highest degree." He says that he sees no 
reason why two or three good novels should not 
be written at the same time ; and that, for his own 
part, he was accustomed to write two hundred 
and fifty words every fifteen minutes, by the 
watch, during his working hours. Nor does he 
mind letting us know that when he sits down to 
write a novel, he neither knows nor cares how it 
is to end. And finally, one is a little startled to 
hear him say, epigrammatically, that a writer 



160 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

should not have to tell a story, but should have a 
story to tell. Beyond a doubt, Anthony Trollope 
is something of a paradox. 

The world has long ago passed its judgment 
on his stories, but it is interesting, all the same, 
to note his own opinion of them; and though 
never arrogant, he is generally tolerant, if not 
genial. "A novel should be a picture of com- 
mon life, enlivened by humor and sweetened by 
pathos. I have never fancied myself to be a man 
of genius," he says ; but again, with strange im- 
perviousness, " A small daily task, if it be daily, 
will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules." 
Beat them, how ? Why, in quantity. But how 
about quality? Is the travail of a work of art 
the same thing as the making of a pair of shoes ? 
Emerson tells us that — 

" Ever the words of the gods resound, 
But the porches of man's ear 
Seldom, in this low life's round, 
Are unsealed, that he may hear." 

No one disputes, however, that you may hear the 
tapping of the cobbler's hammer at any time. 

To the view of the present writer, how much 
good soever Mr. Trollope may have done as a 
preacher and moralist, he has done great harm to 



THE MAKER OF MANY BOOKS. 161 

English fictitious literature by his novels ; and it 
need only be added, in this connection, that his 
methods and results in novel-writing seem best to 
be explained by that peculiar mixture of separate- 
ness and commonplaceness which we began by re- 
marking in him. The separateness has given him 
the standpoint whence he has been able to observe 
and describe the commonplaceness with which (in 
spite of his separateness) he is in vital sympathy. 
But Trollope the man is the abundant and con- 
soling compensation for Trollope the novelist; 
and one wishes that his books might have died, 
and he lived on indefinitely. It is charming to 
read of his life in London after his success in the 
Cornhill Magazine. " Up to that time I had lived 
very little among men. It was a festival to me to 
dine at the ' Garrick.' I think I became popular 
among those with whom I associated. I have 
ever wished to be liked by those around me — a 
wish that during the first half of my life was 
never gratified." And, again, in summing up his 
life, he says : " I have betrayed no woman. 
Wine has brought to me no sorrow. It has been 
the companionship, rather than the habit of 
smoking that I loved. I have never desired to 
win money, and I have lost none. To enjoy 



162 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

the excitement of pleasure, but to be free from 
its vices and ill-effects — to have the sweet, and 
to leave the bitter untasted — that has been my 
study. I will not say that I have never scorched 
a finger; but I carry no ugly wounds." 

A man who, at the end of his career, could 
make such a profession as this — who felt the need 
of no further self-vindication than this — such a 
man, whatever may have been his accountability 
to the muse of Fiction, is a credit to England and 
to human nature, and deserves to be numbered 
among the darlings of mankind. It was an honor 
to be called his friend ; and what his idea of 
friendship was, may be learned from the passage 
in which he speaks of his friend Millais — with 
the quotation of which this paper may fitly be 
concluded : — 

" To see him has always been a pleasure ; his 
voice has always been a sweet sound in my ears. 
Behind his back I have never heard him praised 
without joining the eulogist ; I have never heard 
a word spoken against him without opposing the 
censurer. These words, should he ever see them, 
will come to him from the grave, and will tell 
him of my regard — as one living man never tells 
another." 



CHAPTER VII. 

MR. MALLOCK'S MISSING SCIENCE. 

Before criticising Mr. Mallock's little essay, 
let us summarize its contents. The author be- 
gins with an analysis of the aims, the principles, 
and the " pseudo-science " of modern Democracy. 
Having established the evil and destructive char- 
acter of these things, he sets himself to show by 
logical argument that the present state of social 
inequality, which Democrats wish to disturb, is a 
natural and wholesome state ; that the continu- 
ance of civilization is dependent upon it ; and 
that it could only be overturned by effecting a 
radical change — not in human institutions, but 
in human character. The desire for inequality 
is inherent in the human character ; and in order 
to prove this statement, Mr. Mallock proceeds to 
affirm that there is such a thing as a science 
of human character; that of this science he is 
the discoverer; and that the application of this 

163 



164 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

science to the question at issue will demonstrate 
the integrity of Mr. Mallock's views, and the in- 
firmity of all others. In the ensuing chapters 
the application is made, and at the end the truth 
of the proposition is declared established. 

This is the outline ; but let us note some of the 
details. Mr. Mallock asserts (Chap. I.) that the 
aim of modern Democracy is to overturn " all that 
has hitherto been connected with high-breeding 
or with personal culture " ; and that " to call the 
Democrats a set of thieves and confiscators is 
merely to apply names to them which they have 
no wish to repudiate." He maintains (Chap. II.) 
that the first and foremost of the Democratic 
principles is "that the perfection of society in- 
volves social equality " ; and that " the luxury of 
one man means the deprivation of another." He 
credits the Democrats with arguing that "the 
means of producing equality are a series of 
changes in existing institutions " ; that " by 
changing the institutions of a society we are able 
to change its structure " ; that " the cause of the 
distribution of wealth" is "laws and forms of 
government " ; and that " the wealthy classes, as 
such, are connected with wealth in no other way 
but as the accidental appropriates of it." In 



MB. MALLOCK'S MISSING SCIENCE. 165 

his third chapter he tells us that " the entire 
theory of modern Democracy . . . depends 
on the doctrine that the cause of wealth is labor " ; 
that Democrats believe we " may count on a man 
to labor, just as surely as we may count on a man 
to eat " ; that " the man who does not labor is 
supported by the man who does " ; and that the 
pseudo-science of modern Democracy " starts with 
the conception of man as containing in himself 
a natural tendency to labor." And here Mr. 
Mallock's statement of his opponent's position 
ends. 

In the fourth chapter we are brought within 
sight of u The Missing Substitute." "A man's 
character," we are told, " divides into his desires 
on the one hand, and his capacities on the other " ; 
and it is observed that "various as are men's de- 
sires and capacities, yet if talent and ambition 
commanded no more than idleness and stupidity, 
all men practically would be idle and stupid." 
" Men's capacities," we are reminded, " are prac- 
tically unequal, because they develop their own 
potential inequalities ; they do this because they 
desire to place themselves in unequal external 
circumstances, — which result the condition of 
society renders possible." 



166 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

Coming now to the Science of Human Charac- 
ter itself, we find that it "asserts a permanent 
relationship to exist between human character 
and social inequality " ; and the author then pro- 
ceeds at some length to show how near Herbert 
Spencer, Buckle, and other social and economic 
philosophers, came to stumbling over his missing 
science, and yet avoided doing so. Nevertheless, 
argues Mr. Mallock, "if there be such a thing as 
a social science, or a science of history, there 
must be also a science of biography " ; and this 
science, though it "cannot show us how any 
special man will act in the future," yet, if " any 
special action be given us, it can show us that it 
was produced by a special motive ; and conversely, 
that if the special motive be wanting, the special 
action is sure to be wanting also." As an exam- 
ple how to distinguish between those traits of 
human character which are available for scientific 
purposes, and those which are not, Mr. Mallock 
instances a mob, which temporarily acts together 
for some given purpose : the individual differences 
of character then " cancel out," and only points 
of agreement are left. Proceeding to the sixth 
chapter, he applies himself to setting to rest the 
scruples of those who find something cynical in 



ME. MALLOCK'S MISSING SCIENCE. 167 

the idea that the desire for Inequality is compat- 
ible with a respectable form of human character. 
It is true, he says, that man does not live by" 
bread alone ; but he denies that he means to say 
" that all human activity is motived by the desire 
for inequality " ; he would assert that only " of all 
productive labor, except the lowest." The only 
actions independent of the desire for inequality, 
however, are those performed in the name of art, 
science, philanthropy, and religion; and even in 
these cases, so far as the actions are not motived 
by a desire for inequality, they are not of product- 
ive use ; and vice versd. In the remaining chap- 
ters, which we must dismiss briefly, we meet with 
such statements as " labor has been produced by 
an artificial creation of want of food, and by then 
supplying the want on certain conditions " ; that 
"civilization has always been begun by an op- 
pressive minority"; that "progress depends on 
certain gifted individuals," and therefore social 
equality would destroy progress ; that inequality 
influences production by existing as an object of 
desire and as a means of pressure ; that the evils 
of poverty are caused by want, not by inequality ; 
and that, finally, equality is not the goal of pro- 
gress, but of retrogression ; that inequality is not 



168 CONFESSIONS AND CKITICISMS. 

an accidental evil of civilization, but the cause of 
its development; the distance of the poor from 
the rich is not the cause of the former's poverty as 
distinct from riches, but of their civilized compe- 
tence as distinct from barbarism; and that the 
apparent changes in the direction of equality re- 
corded in history, have been, in reality, none 
other than "a more efficient arrangement of in- 
equalities." 

Now, let us inquire what all this ingenious 
prattle about Inequality and the Science of Hu- 
man Character amounts to. What does Mr. Mal- 
lock expect ? His book has been out six months, 
and still Democracy exists. But does any such 
Democracy as he combats exist, or could it con- 
ceivably exist? Have his investigations of the 
human character failed to inform him that one of 
the strongest uatural instincts of man's nature is 
immovably opposed to anything like an equal dis- 
tribution of existing wealth? — because whoever 
owns anything, if it be only a coat, wishes to keep 
it ; and that wish makes him aware that his fellow- 
man will wish to keep, and will keep at all haz- 
ards, whatever things belong to him. What Dem- 
ocrats really desire is to enable all men to have 



MR. mallock's MISSING SCIENCE. 169 

an equal chance to obtain wealth, instead of 
being, as is largely the case now, hampered and 
kept down by all manner of legal and arbitrary 
restrictions. As for the " desire for Inequality," 
it seems to exist chiefly in Mr. Mallock's imagi- 
nation. Who does desire it? Does the man 'who 
" strikes " for higher wages desire it ? Let us see. 
A strike, to be successful, must be not an individ- 
ual act, but the act of a large body of men, all 
demanding the same thing — an increase in wages. 
If they gain their end, no difference has taken 
place in their mutual position ; and their position 
in regard to their employers is altered only in 
that an aj)proach has been made toward greater 
equality with the latter. And so in other depart- 
ments of human effort : the aim, which the man 
who wishes to better his position sets before him- 
self, is not to rise head and shoulders above his 
equals, but to equal his superiors. And as to the 
Socialist schemes for the reorganization of society, 
they imply, at most, a wish to see all men start 
fair in the race of life, the only advantages allowed 
being not those of rank or station, but solely of 
innate capacity. And the reason the Socialist 
desires this is, because he believes, rightly or 
wrongly, that rnai^ inefficient men are, at pres- 



170 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

ent, only artificially protected from betraying 
their inefficiency; and that many efficient men 
are only artificially prevented from showing their 
efficiency; and that the fair start he proposes 
would not result in keeping all men on a dead 
level, but would simply put those in command 
who had a genuine right to be there. 

But this is taxing Mr. Mallock too seriously : 
he has not written in earnest. But, as his uncle, 
Mr. Froude, said, when reading "The New Re- 
public," — "The rogue is clever!" He has read 
a good deal, he has an active mind, a smooth re- 
dundancy of expression, a talent for caricature, a 
fondness for epigram and paradox, a useful shal- 
lowness, and an amusing impudence. He has no 
practical knowledge of mankind, no experience 
of life, no commanding point of view, and no 
depth of insight. He has no conception of the 
meaning and quality of the problems with whose 
exterior aspects he so prettily trifles. He has 
constructed a Science of Human Character with- 
out for one moment being aware that, for instance, 
human character and human nature are two dis- 
tinct things ; and that, furthermore, the one is 
everything that the other is not. -As little is he 



MR. MALLOCK'S MISSING SCIENCE. 171 

conscious of the significance of the words "so- 
ciety" and "civilization"; nor can he explain 
whether, or why, either of them is desirable or 
undesirable, good or bad. He has never done, 
and (judging from his published works) we do 
not believe him capable of doing, any analytical 
or constructive thinking ; at most, as in the pres- 
ent volume, he turns a few familiar objects upside 
down, and airily invites his audience to believe 
that he has thereby earned the name of Dis- 
coverer, if not of Creator. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THEODORE WINTHROP'S WRITINGS. 

On an accessible book-shelf in my library, stand 
side by side four volumes whose contents I once 
knew by heart, and which, after the lapse of 
twenty years, are yet tolerably distinct in my 
memory. These are stoutly bound in purple 
muslin, with a stamp, of Persian design appar- 
ently, on the centre of each cover. They are 
stained and worn, and the backs have faded to a 
brownish hue, from exposure to the light, and a 
leaf in one of the volumes has been torn across; 
but the paper and the sewing and the clear bold 
type are still as serviceable as ever. The books 
seem to have been made to last, — to stand a great 
deal of reading. Contrasted with the aesthet- 
ically designed covers one sees nowadays, they 
would be considered inexcusably ugly, and the 
least popular novelist of our time would protest 
against having his lucubrations presented to the 
public in such plain attire. Nevertheless, on 

172 



THEODORE WINTHROP'S WRITINGS. 173 

turning to the title-pages, you may see imprinted, 
on the first, "Fourteenth Edition"; on the sec- 
ond, " Twelfth Edition " ; and on the others, 
indications somewhat less magnificent, but still 
evidence of very exceptional circulation. The 
date they bear is that of the first years of our 
civil war; and the first published of them is 
prefaced by a biographical memoir of the author, 
written by his friend George William Curtis. 
This memoir was originally printed in the Atlantic 
Monthly, two or three months after the death of 
its subject, Theodore Winthrop. 

For these books, — three novels, and one volume 
of records of travel, — came from his hand, though 
they did not see the light until after he had 
passed beyond the sphere of authors and pub- 
lishers. At that time, the country was in an 
exalted and heroic mood, and the men who went 
to fight its battles were regarded with a personal 
affection by no means restricted to their personal 
acquaintances. Their names were on all lips, and 
those of them who fell were mourned by multi- 
tudes instead of by individuals. Winthrop's his- 
toric name, and the influential position of some 
of his nearest friends, would have sufficed to 
bring into unusual prominence his brief career 



174 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

and his fate as a soldier, even had his in- 
trinsic qualities and character been less honor- 
able and winning than they were. But he was a 
type of a young American such as America is 
proud to own. He was high-minded, refined, 
gifted, handsome. I recollect a portrait of him 
published soon after his death, — a photograph, I 
think, from a crayon drawing; an eloquent, sen- 
sitive, rather melancholy, but manly and cour- 
ageous face, with grave eyes, the mouth veiled 
by a long moustache. It was the kind of coun- 
tenance one would wish our young heroes to 
have. When, after the catastrophe at Great 
Bethel, it became known that Winthrop had 
left writings behind him, it would have been 
strange indeed had not every one felt a desire 
to read them. 

Moreover, he had already begun to be known 
as a writer. It was during 1860, I believe, that 
a story of his, in two instalments, entitled " Love 
on Skates," appeared in the "Atlantic." It was 
a brilliant and graphic celebration of the art of 
skating, engrafted on a love-tale as full of romance 
and movement as could be desired. Admirably 
told it was, as I recollect it ; crisp with the healthy 
vigor of American wintry atmosphere, with bright 



THEODORE WINTHROP'S WRITINGS. 175 

touches of humor, and, here and there, passages 
of sentiment, half tender, half playful. It was 
something new in our literature, and gave promise 
of valuable work to come. But the writer was 
not destined to fulfil the promise. In the next 
year, from the camp of his regiment, he wrote one 
or two admirable descriptive sketches, touching 
upon the characteristic points of the campaigning 
life which had just begun ; but, before the last of 
these had become familiar to the " Atlantic's " 
readers, it was known that it would be the last. 
Theodore Winthrop had been killed. 

He was only in his thirty-third year. He was 
born in New Haven, and had entered Yale Col- 
lege with the class of '48. The A KE Fraternity 
was, I believe, founded in the year of his ad- 
mission, and he must, therefore, have been among 
its earliest members. He was distinguished as 
a scholar, and the traces of his classic and philo- 
sophical acquirements are everywhere visible in 
his books. During the five or six years following 
his graduation, he travelled abroad, and in the 
South and West; a wild frontier life had great 
attractions for him, as he who reads " John Brent " 
and " The Canoe and the Saddle " need not be 
told. He tried his hand at various things, but 



176 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

could settle himself to no profession, — an in- 
ability which would have excited no remark in 
England, which has had time to recognize the 
value of men of leisure, as such ; but which seems 
to have perplexed some of his friends in this 
country. Be that as it may, no one had reason to 
complain of lack of energy and promptness on his 
part when patriotism revealed a path to Win- 
throp. He knew that the time for him had 
come ; but he had also known that the world is 
not yet so large that all men, at all times, can lay 
their hands upon the work that is suitable for 
them to do. 

Let us, however, return to the novels. They 
appear to have been written about 1856 and 1857, 
when their author was twenty-eight or nine years 
old. Of the order in which they were composed 
I have no record; but, judging from internal evi- 
dence, I should say that " Edwin Brothertoft " 
came first, then " Cecil Dreeme," and then " John 
Brent." The style, and the quality of thought, 
in the latter is more mature than in the others, 
and its tone is more fresh and wholesome. In the 
order of publication, " Cecil Dreeme " was first, 
and seems also to have been most widely read ; 
then "John Brent," and then "Edwin Brother- 



17T 



toft," the scene of which was laid in the last cen- 
tury. I remember seeing, at the house of James 
T. Fields, their publisher, the manuscripts of 
these books, carefully bound and preserved. They 
were written on large ruled letter-paper, and the 
handwriting was very large, and had a consid- 
erable slope. There were scarcely any correc- 
tions or erasures; but it is possible that Win- 
throp made clean copies of his stories after 
composing them. Much of the dialogue, espec- 
ially, bears evidence of having been revised, and 
of the author's having perhaps sacrificed ease and 
naturalness, here and there, to the craving for con- 
ciseness which has been one of the chief stum- 
bling-blocks in the way of our young writers. He 
wished to avoid heaviness and "padding," and 
went to the other extreme. He wanted to cut 
loose from the old, stale traditions of composition, 
and to produce something which should be new, 
not only in character and significance, but in 
manner of presentation. He had the ambition of 
the young Hafiz, who professed a longing to "tear 
down this tiresome old sky." But the old sky 
has good reasons for being what and where it is, 
and young radicals finally come to perceive that, 
regarded from the proper point of view, and in 



178 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

the right spirit, it is not so tiresome after all. 
Divine Revelation itself can be expressed in very 
moderate and commonplace language ; and if 
one's thoughts are worth thinking, they are worth 
clothing in adequate and serene attire. 

But " culture," and literature with it, have 
made such surprising advances of late, that we 
are apt to forget how really primitive and unen- 
lightened the generation was in which Winthrop 
wrote. Imagine a time when Mr. Henry James, 
Jr., and Mr. W. D. Howells had not been heard 
of ; when Bret Harte was still hidden below the 
horizon of the far West; when no one suspected 
that a poet named Aldrich would ever write a 
story called "Marjorie Daw"; when, in England, 
" Adam Bede " and his successors were unborn ; 
— a time of antiquity so remote, in short, that the 
mere possibility of a discussion upon the relative 
merit of the ideal and the realistic methods of fic- 
tion was undreamt of ! What had an unfortu- 
nate novelist of those days to fall back upon? 
Unless he wished to expatriate himself, and follow 
submissively in the well worn steps of Dickens, 
Thackeray, and Trollope, the only models he 
could look to were Washington Irving, Edgar 
Allan Poe, James Fenimore Cooper, and Nathan- 



THEODOEE WINTHKOP'S WEITINGS. 179 

iel Hawthorne. "Elsie Venner " had scarcely 
made its appearance at that date. Irving and 
Cooper were, on the other hand, somewhat anti- 
quated. Poe and Hawthorne were men of very- 
peculiar genius, and, however deep the impression 
they have produced on our literature, they have 
never had, because they never can have, imitators. 
As for the author of " Uncle Tom's Cabin," she was 
a woman in the first place, and, in the second place, 
she sufficiently filled the field she had selected. A 
would-be novelist, therefore, possessed of ambi- 
tion, and conscious of not being his own father or 
grandfather, saw an untrodden space before him, 
into which he must plunge without support and' 
without guide. No wonder if, at the outset, he 
was a trifle awkward and ill-at-ease, and, like a 
raw recruit under fire, appeared affected from the 
very desire he felt to look unconcerned. It is 
much to his credit that he essayed the venture at 
all ; and it is plain to be seen that, with each for- 
ward step he took, his self-possession and sim- 
plicity increased. If time had been given him, 
there is no reason to doubt that he might have 
been standing at the head of our champions of 
fiction to-day. 

But time was not given him, and his work, like 



180 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

all other work, if it is to be judged at all, must 
be judged on its merits. He excelled most in 
passages descriptive of action ; and the more vigor- 
ous and momentous the action, the better, invaria- 
bly, was the description ; he rose to the occasion, 
and was not defeated by it. Partly for this rea- 
son, "Cecil Dreeme," the most popular of his 
books, seems to me the least meritorious of them 
all. The story has little movement ; it stagnates 
round Chrysalis College. The love intrigue is 
morbid and unwholesome, and the characters 
(which are seldom Winthrop's strong point) are 
more than usually artificial and unnatural. The 
dramatis personal are, indeed, little more than 
moral or immoral principles incarnate. There is 
no growth in them, no human variableness or 
complexity; it is "Every Man in his Humor" 
over again, with the humor left out. Densdeth 
is an impossible rascal ; Churm, a scarcely more 
possible Rhadamanthine saint. Cecil Dreeme her- 
self never fully recovers from the ambiguity forced 
upon her by her masculine attire; and Emma 
Denman could never have been both what we are 
told she was, and what she is described as being. 
As for Robert Byng, the supposed narrator of the 
tale, his name seems to have been given him in 



THEODORE WINTHROP'S WRITINGS. 181 

order wantonly to increase the confusion caused 
by the contradictory traits with which he is ac- 
credited. The whole atmosphere of the story is 
unreal, fantastic, obscure. An attempt is made 
to endow our poor, raw New York with some- 
thing of the stormy and ominous mystery of the 
immemorial cities of Europe. The best feature of 
the book (morbidness aside) is the construction of 
the plot, which shows ingenuity and an artistic 
perception of the value of mystery and moral 
compensation. It recalls, in some respects, the 
design of Hawthorne's "Blithedale Romance," — 
that is, had the latter never been written, the 
former would probably have been written dif- 
ferently. In spite of its faults, it is an interest- 
ing book, and, to the critical eye, there are in 
almost every chapter signs that indicate the pos- 
session of no ordinary gifts on the author's part. 
But it may be doubted whether the special cir- 
cumstances under which it was published had 
not something to do with its wide popularity. 
I imagine "John Brent" to have been really 
much more popular, in the better sense; it was 
read and liked by a higher class of readers. It 
is young ladies and school-girls who swell the 
numbers of an " edition," and hence the difficulty 



182 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

in arguing from this as to the literary merit of 
the book itself. 

"Edwin Brothertoft," though somewhat dis- 
jointed in construction, and jerky in style, is yet 
a picturesque and striking story ; and the gallop 
of the hero across country and through the night 
to rescue from the burning house the woman who 
had been false to him, is vigorously described, and 
gives us some foretaste of the thrill of suspense 
^and excitement we feel in reading the story of the 
famous " Gallop of three " in " John Brent." The 
writer's acquaintance with the history of the pe- 
riod is adequate, and a romantic and chivalrous 
tone is preserved throughout the volume. It is 
worth noting that, in all three of Winthrop's 
novels, a horse bears a part in the crisis of the tale. 
In " Cecil Dreeme " it is Churm's pair of trotters 
that convey the party of rescuers to the private 
Insane Asylum in which Densdeth had confined 
the heroine. In "Edwin Brothertoft," it is one of 
Edwin's renowned breed of white horses that car- 
ries him through almost insuperable obstacles to 
his goal. In "John Brent," the black stallion, Don 
Fulano, who is throughout the chief figure in the 
book, reaches his apogee in the tremendous race 
across the plains and down the rocky gorge of the 



THEODORE WINTHROP'S WRITINGS. 183 

mountains, to where the abductors of the heroine 
are just about to pitch their camp at the end of 
their day's journey. The motive is fine and ar- 
tistic, and, in each of the books, these incidents 
are as good as, or better then, anything else in 
the narrative. 

" John Brent " is, in fact, full enough of merit 
to more than redeem its defects. The self-con- 
sciousness of the writer is less noticeable than in 
the other works, and the effort to be epigram- 
matic, short, sharp, and "telling" in style, is 
considerably modified. The interest is lively, 
continuous, and cumulative ; and there is just 
enough tragedy in the story to make the happy 
ending all the happier. It was a novel and adven- 
turous idea to make a horse the hero of a tale, 
and the manner in which the idea is carried out 
more than justifies the hazard. Winthrop, as we 
know, was an ideal horseman, and knows what he 
is writing about. He contrives to realize Don 
Fulano for us, in spite of the almost supernatural 
powers and intelligence that he ascribes to the 
gallant animal. One is willing to stretch a point 
of probability when such a dashing and inspiring 
end is in view. In the present day we are getting 
a little tired of being brought to account, at every 



184 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

turn, by Old Prob., who tyrannizes over literature 
quite as much as over the weather. Theodore 
Winthrop's inspiration, in this instance at least, 
was strong and genuine enough to enable him to 
feel what he was telling as the truth, and there- 
fore it produces an effect of truth upon the reader. 
How distinctly every incident of that ride remains 
stamped on the memory, even after so long an 
interval as has elapsed since it was written ! And 
I recollect that one of the youthful devourers of 
this book, who was of an artistic turn, was moved 
to paint three little water-color pictures of the 
Gallop; the first showing the three horses, — the 
White, the Gray, and the Black, scouring across 
the prairie, towards the barrier of mountains 
behind which the sun was setting ; the second 
depicting Don Fulano, with Dick Wade and John 
Brent on his back, plunging down the gorge upon 
the abductors, one of whom had just pulled the 
trigger of his rifle ; while the third gives the scene 
in which the heroic horse receives his death- 
wound in carrying the fugitive across the creek 
away from his pursuers. At this distance of time, 
I am unable to bear any testimony as to the tech- 
nical value of the little pictures ; I am inclined to 
fancy that they would have to be taken cumgrano 



THEODORE WINTHROP's WRITINGS. 185 

amoris, as they certainly were executed con amove. 
But, however that may be, the instance (which 
was doubtless only one of many analogous to it) 
shows that Winthrop possessed the faculty of stim- 
ulating and electrifying the imagination of his 
readers, which all our recent improvements in the 
art and artifice of composition have not made too 
common, and for which, if for nothing else, we 
might well feel indebted to him. 



CHAPTER IX. 

EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 

It is not with Americans as with other peoples. 
Our position is more vague and difficult, because 
it is not primarily related to the senses. I can 
easily find out where England or Prussia is, and 
recognize an Englishman or German when we 
meet; but we Americans are not, to the same ex- 
tent as these, limited by geographical and physi- 
cal boundaries. The origin of America was not 
like that of the European nations ; the latter were 
born after the flesh, but we after the spirit. It is 
of the first consequence to them that their fron- 
tiers should be defended, and their nationality 
kept distinct. But, though I esteem highly all 
our innumerable square miles of East and West, 
North and South, and our Pacific and Atlantic 
coasts, I cannot help deeming them quite a 
secondary consideration. If America is not a 
great deal more than these United States, then 
the United States are no better than a penal 

186 



EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 187 

colony. It is convenient, no doubt, for a great 
idea to find a great embodiment — a suitable in- 
carnation and stage ; but the idea does not de- 
pend upon these things. It is an accidental — or, 
I would rather say, a Providential — matter that 
the Puritans came to New England, or that 
Columbus discovered the continent in time for 
them ; but it has always happened that when a 
soul is born it finds a body ready fitted to it. 
The body, however, is an instrument merely ; it 
enables the spirit to take hold of its mortal life, 
just as the hilt enables us to grasp the sword. If 
the Puritans had not come to New England, 
still the spirit that animated them would have 
lived, and made itself a place somehow. And, in 
fact, how many Puritans, for how many ages pre- 
vious, had been trying to find standing-room in 
the world, and failed ! They called themselves 
by many names ; their voices were heard in many 
countries ; the time had not yet come for them to 
be born — to touch their earthly inheritance ; but, 
meantime, the latent impetus was accumulating, 
and the Mayflower was driven across the Atlantic 
by it at last. Nor is this all — the Mayflower is 
sailing still between the old world and the new. 
Every day it brings new settlers, if not to our 



188 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

material harbors — to our Boston Bay, our Castle 
Garden, our Golden Gate — at any rate, to our 
mental ports and wharves. We cannot take up a 
European newspaper without rinding an Ameri- 
can idea in it. It is said that a great many of 
our countrymen take the steamer to England 
every summer. But they come back again ; and 
they bring with them many who come to stay. I 
do not refer specially to the occupants of the 
steerage — the literal emigrants. One cannot say 
much about them — they may be Americans or 
not, as it turns out. But England and the conti- 
nent are full of Americans who were born there, 
and many of whom will die there. Sometimes 
they are better Americans than the New Yorker 
or the Bostonian who lives in Beacon Street or 
the Bowery and votes in the elections. They 
may be born and reside where they please, but 
they belong to us, and, in the better sense, they 
are among us. Broadway and Washington 
Street, Vermont and Colorado extend all over 
Europe. Russia is covered with them ; she tries 
to shove them away to Siberia, but in vain. We 
call mountains and prairies solid facts ; but the 
geography of the mind is infinitely more stub- 
born. I dare say there are a great many oblique- 



EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 189 

eyed, pig-tailed New Englanders in the Celestial 
Empire. They may never have visited these 
shores, or even heard of them ; but what of that ? 
They think our thought — they have apprehended 
our idea, and, by and by, they or their heirs will 
cause it to prevail. 

It is useless for us to hide our heads in the 
grass and refuse to rise to the height of our occa- 
sion. We are here as the realization of a truth — 
the fulfilment of a prophecy; we must attest a 
new departure in the moral and intellectual de- 
velopment of the human race ; for whichever of 
us does not, must suffer annihilation. If I deny 
my birthright as an American, I shall disappear 
and not be missed, for an American will take my 
place. It is not altogether a luxurious position to 
find yourself in. You cannot sit still and hold 
your hands. All manner of hard and unpleasant 
things are expected of you, which you neglect at 
your peril. It is like the old fable of the mer- 
maid. She loved a mortal youth, and, in order 
that she might win his affection, she prayed that 
she might have the limbs and feet of a human 
maiden. Her prayer was answered, and she met 
her prince ; but every step she took was as if she 
trod on razors. It is a fine thing to sit in your 



190 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

chair and reflect on being an American ; but 
when you have to rise up and do an American's 
duty before the world — how sharp the razors 
are ! 

Of course, we do not always endure the test ; 
the flesh and blood on this side of the planet is 
not, so far as I have observed, of a quality essen- 
tially different from that on the other. Possibly 
our population is too many for us. Out of fifty 
million people it would be strange if here and 
there one appeared who was not at all points a 
hero. Indeed, I am sometimes tempted to think 
that that little band of original Mayflower Pil- 
grims has not greatly multiplied since their disem- 
barkation. However it may be with their bodily 
offspring, their spiritual progeny are not invaria- 
bly found in the chair of the Governor or on the 
floor of the Senate. What are these Irish fellow- 
creatures doing here? Well, Bridget serves us 
in the kitchen ; but Patrick is more helpful yet ; 
he goes to the legislature, and is the servant of. 
the people at large. It is very obliging of him ; 
but turn and turn about is fair play ; and it would 
be no more than justice were we, once in a while, 
to take off our coat and serve Patrick in the 
same way. 



EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 191 

When we get into a tight place we are apt to 
try to slip out of it under some plea of a Eu- 
ropean precedent. But it used to be supposed 
that it was precisely European precedents that 
we came over here to avoid. I am not profoundly 
versed in political economy, nor is this the time 
or place to discuss its principles ; but, as regards 
protection, for example, I can conceive that 
there may be arguments against it as well as for 
it. Emerson used to say that the way to conquer 
the foreign artisan was not to kill him but to beat 
his work. He also pointed out that the money 
we made out of the European wars, at the be- 
ginning of this century, had the result of bring- 
ing the impoverished population of those 
countries down upon us in the shape of emi- 
grants. They shared our crops and went on the 
poor-rates, and so we did not gain so much after 
all. One cannot . help wishing that America 
would assume the loftiest possible ground in her 
political and commercial relations. With all due 
respect to the sagacity and ability of our ruling 
demagogues, I should not wish them to be quoted 
as typical Americans. The domination of such 
persons has an effect which is by no means measu- 
rable by their personal acts. What they can do 



192 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

is of infinitesimal importance. But the mischief 
is that they incline every one of us to believe, as 
Emerson puts it, in two gods. They make the 
morality of Wall Street and the White House 
seem to be a different thing from that of our 
parlors and nurseries. " He may be a little shady 
on 'change," we say, " but he is a capital fellow 
when you know him." But if he is a capital fel- 
low when I know him, then I shall never find 
much fault with his professional operations, and 
shall end, perhaps, by allowing him to make 
some investments for me. Why should not I be 
a capital fellow too — and a fellow of capital, to 
boot! I can endure public opprobrium with 
tolerable equanimity so long as it remains public. 
It is the private cold looks that trouble me. 

In short, we may speak of America in two 
senses — either meaning the America that actually 
meets us at the street corners and in the news- 
papers, or the ideal America — America as it 
ought to be. They are not the same thing ; and, 
at present, there seems to be a good deal more of 
the former than of the latter. And yet, there is 
a connection between them ; the latter has made 
the former possible. We sometimes see a great 
crowd drawn together by proclamation, for some 



EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 193 

noble purpose — to decide upon a righteous war, 
or to pass a just decree. But the people on the 
outskirts of the crowd, finding themselves unable 
to hear the orators, and their time hanging idle 
on their hands, take to throwing stones, knocking 
off hats, or, perhaps, picking pockets. They may 
have come to the meeting with as patriotic or vir- 
tuous intentions as the promoters themselves; 
nay, under more favorable circumstances, they 
might themselves have become promoters. Virtue 
and patriotism are not private property; at cer- 
tain times any one may possess them. And, on 
the other hand, we have seen examples enough, of 
late, of persons of the highest respectability and 
trust turning out, all at once, to be very sorry 
scoundrels. A man changes according to the per- 
son with whom he converses ; and though the 
outlook is rather sordid to-day, we have not for- 
gotten that during the Civil War the air seemed 
full of heroism. So that these two Americas — 
the real and the ideal — far apart though they 
may be in one sense, may, in another sense, be as 
near together as our right hand to our left. In a 
greater or less degree, they exist side by side in 
each one of us. But civil wars do not come every 
day ; nor can we wish them to, even to show us 



194 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

once more that we are worthy of our destiny. 
We must find some less expensive and quieter 
method of reminding ourselves of that. And of 
such methods, none, perhaps, is better than to 
review the lives of Americans who were truly 
great ; to ask what their country meant to them ; 
what they wished her to become; what virtues 
and what vices they detected in her. Passion 
may be generous, but passion cannot last; and 
when it is over, we are cold and indifferent again. 
But reason and example reach us when we are 
calm and passive ; and what they inculcate is 
more likely to abide. At least, it will be only 
evil passion that can cast it out. 

I have said that many a true American is 
doubtless born, and lives, abroad; but that does 
not prevent Emerson from having been born here. 
So far as the outward accidents of generation and 
descent go, he could not have been more Amer- 
ican than he was. Of course, one prefers that it 
should be so. A rare gem should be fitly set. 
A. noble poem should be printed with the fairest 
type of the Riverside Press, and upon fine paper 
with wide margins. It helps us to believe in our- 
selves to be told that Emerson's ancestry was not 
only Puritan, but clerical; that the central and 



EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 195 

vital thread of the idea that created us, ran 
through his heart. The nation, and even New 
England, Massachusetts, Boston, have many traits 
that are not found in him ; but there is nothing 
in him that is not a refinement, a sublimation and 
concentration of what is good in them; and the 
selection and grouping of the elements are such 
that he is a typical figure. Indeed, he is all type ; 
which is the same as saying that there is nobody 
like him. And, mentally, he produces the im- 
pression of being all force ; in his writings, his 
mind seems to have acted immediately, without 
natural impediment or friction ; as if a machine 
should be run that was not hindered by the con- 
tact of its parts. As he was physically lean and 
narrow of figure, and his face nothing but so 
■many features welded together, so there was no 
adipose tissue in his thought. It is pure, clear, 
and accurate, and has the fault of dryness ; but 
often moves in forms of exquisite beauty. It is 
not adhesive ; it sticks to nothing, nor anything 
to it ; after ranging through all the various philos- 
ophies of the world, it comes out as clean and 
characteristic as ever. It has numberless affin- 
ities, but no adhesion ; it does not even adhere to 
itself. There are many separate statements in 



196 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

any one of his essays which present no logical 
continuity; but although this fact has caused 
great anxiety to many disciples of Emerson, it 
never troubled him. It was the inevitable result 
of his method of thought. Wandering at will in 
the flower-garden of religious and moral philos- 
ophy, it was his part to pluck such blossoms as he 
saw were beautiful; not to find out their botanical 
interconnection. He would afterward arrange 
them, for art or harmony's sake, according to 
their color or their fragrance ; but it was not his 
affair to go any farther in their classification. 

This intuitive method of his, however little it 
may satisfy those who wish to have all their 
thinking done for them, who desire not only to 
have given to them all the cities of the earth, 
but also to have straight roads built for them 
from one to the other, carries with it its own 
justification. " There is but one reason," is Emer- 
son's saying ; and again and again does he prove 
without proving it. We confess, over and over, 
that the truth which he asserts is indeed a truth. 
Even his own variations from the truth, when he 
is betrayed into them, serve to confirm the rule. 
For these are seldom or never intuitions at first 
hand — pure intuitions ; but, as it were, intuitions 



EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 197 

from previous intuitions — deductions. The form 
of statement is the same, but the source is dif- 
ferent; they are from Emerson, instead of from 
the Absolute ; tinted, not colorless. They show 
a mental bias, very slight, but redeeming him 
back to humanity. We love him the more for 
them, because they indicate that for him, too, 
there was a choice of ways, and that he must 
struggle and watch to choose the right. 

We are so much wedded to systems, and so 
accustomed to connect a system with a man, that 
the absence of system, either explicit or implicit, 
in Emerson, strikes us as a defect. And yet 
truth has no system, nor the human mind. This 
philosopher maintains one, that another thesis. 
Both are true essentially, and yet .there seems a 
contradiction between them. We cannot bear to 
be illogical, and so we enlist some under this 
banner, some under that. By so doing we sac- 
rifice to consistency at least the half of truth. 
Thence we come to examine our intuitions, and 
ask them, not whether they are true in them- 
selves, but what are their tendencies. If it turn 
out that they will lead us to stultify some past 
conclusion to which we stand committed, we drop 
them like hot coals. To Emerson, this behavior 



198 CONFESSIONS AND CKITICISMS. 

appeared the nakedest personal vanity. Recog- 
nizing that he was finite, he could not desire to be 
consistent. If he saw to-day that one thing was 
true, and to-morrow that its opposite was true, 
was it for him to elect which of the two truths 
should have his preference ? No ; to reject either 
would be to reject all ; it belonged to God alone 
to reconcile these contradictions. Between in- 
finite and finite can be no ratio : and the consis- 
tency of the Creator implies the inconsistency of 
the creature. 

Emerson's Americanism, therefore, was Amer- 
icanism in its last and purest analysis, which is 
giving him high praise, and to America great 
hope. But I do not mean to pay him, who was 
so full of modesty and humility, the ungrateful 
compliment of holding him up as the permanent 
American ideal. It is his tendencies, his quality, 
that are valuable, and only in a minor, incipient 
degree his actual results. All human results 
must be strictly limited, and according to the 
epoch and outlook. Emerson does not solve for 
all time the problem of the universe ; he solves 
nothing; but he does what is far more useful — 
he gives a direction and an impetus to lofty 
human endeavor. He does not anticipate the les- 



EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 199 

sons and the discipline of the ages, but he shows us 
how to deal with circumstances in such a manner 
as to secure the good instead of the evil influence. 
New conditions, fresh discoveries, unexpected 
horizons opening before us, will, no doubt, soon 
carry us beyond the scope of Emerson's surmise ; 
but we shall not so easily improve upon his aim 
and attitude. In the spaces beyond the stars 
there may be marvels such as it has not entered 
into the mind of man to conceive ; but there, as 
here, the right way to look will still be upward, 
and the right aspiration be still toward humble- 
ness and charity. 

I have just spoken of Emerson's absence of 
system ; but his writings have nevertheless a 
singular coherence, by virtue of the single-hearted 
motive that has inspired them. Many will, doubt- 
less, have noticed, as I have done, how the whole 
of Emerson illustrates every aspect of him. 

Whether your discourse be of his religion, of 
his ethics, of his relation to society, or what not, 
the picture that you draw will have gained color 
and form from every page that he has written. 
He does not lie in strata ; all that he is permeates 
all that he has done. His books cannot be in- 
dexed, unless you would refer every subject to 



200 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

each paragraph. And so he cannot treat, no 
matter what subject, without incorporating in his 
statement the germs at least of all that he has 
thought and believed. In this respect he is like 
light — the presence of the general at the partic- 
ular. And, to confess the truth, I find myself 
somewhat loath to diffract this pure ray to the 
arbitrary end of my special topic. Why should I 
speak of him as an American? That is not his 
definition. He was an American because he was 
himself. America, however, gives less limitation 
than any other nationality to a generous and 
serene personality. 

I am sometimes disposed to think that Emer- 
son's " English Traits " reveal his American traits 
more than anything else he has written. We are 
described by our own criticisms of others, and 
especially by our criticisms of another nation ; 
the exceptions we take are the mould of our own 
figures. So we have valuable glimpses of Emer- 
son's contours throughout this volume. And it is 
in all respects a fortunate work ; as remarkable a 
one almost for him to write as a volume of his es- 
says for any one else. Comparatively to his other 
books, it is as flesh and blood to spirit ; Emerso- 
nian flesh and blood, it is true, and semi-trans- 



EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 201 

lucent ; but still it completes the man for us : tie 
would have remained too problematical without 
it. Those who have never personally known him 
may finish and solidify their impressions of him 
here. He likes England and the English, too ; 
and that sympathy is beyond our expectation of 
the mind that evolved " Nature " and " The Over- 
Soul." The grasp of his hand, I remember, was 
firm and stout, and we perceive those qualities in 
the descriptions and cordiality of "English 
Traits." Then, it is an objective book ; the eye 
looks outward, not inward ; these pages afford a 
basis not elsewhere obtainable of comparing his 
general human faculty with that of other men. 
Here he descends from the airy heights he treads 
so easily and, standing foot to foot with his peers, 
measures himself against them. He intends only 
to report their stature, and to leave himself out of 
the story ; but their answers to his questions show 
what the Questions were, and what the ques- 
tioner. And we cannot help suspecting, though 
he did not, that the Englishmen were not a little 
put to it to keep pace with their clear-faced, 
penetrating, attentive visitor. 

He has never said of his own countrymen the 
comfortable things that he tells of the English; 



202 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

but we need not grumble at that. The father 
who is severe with his own children will freely 
admire those of others, for whom he is not respon- 
sible. Emerson is stern toward what we are, and 
arduous indeed in his estimate of what we ought 
to be. He intimates that we are not quite worthy 
of our continent ; that we have not as yet lived 
up to our blue china. " In America the geogra- 
phy is sublime, but the men are not." And he 
adds that even our more presentable public acts 
are due to a money-making spirit : " The bene- 
faction derived in Illinois and the great West 
from railroads is inestimable, and vastly exceed- 
ing any intentional philanthropy on record." He 
does not think very respectfully of the designs or 
the doings of the people who went to California 
in 1849, though he admits that " California gets 
civilized in this immoral way," and is fain to sup- 
pose that, " as there is use in the world for poi- 
sons, so the world cannot move without rogues," 
and that, in respect of America, "the huge ani- 
mals nourish huge parasites, and the rancor of the 
disease attests the strength of the constitution." 
He ridicules our unsuspecting provincialism: 
"Have you seen the dozen great men of New 
York and Boston ? Then you may as well die ! " 



EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 203 

He does not spare our tendency to spread-eagle- 
ism and declamation, and having quoted a shrewd 
foreigner as saying of Americans that, "What- 
ever they say has a little the air of a speech," he 
proceeds to speculate whether "the American 
forest has refreshed some weeds of old Pictish 
barbarism just ready to die out ? " He finds the 
foible especially of American youth to be — pre- 
tension ; and remarks, suggestively, that we talk 
much about the key of the age, but " the key to 
all ages is imbecility ! " He cannot reconcile him- 
self to the mania for going abroad. " There is 
a restlessness in our people that argues want of 
character. . . . Can we never extract this tape- 
worm of Europe from the brain of our country- 
men?" He finds, however, this involuntary 
compensation in the practice — that, practically 
" we go to Europe to be Americanized," and 
has faith that one day we shall cast out the 
passion for Europe by the passion for Amer- 
ica." As to our political doings, he can 
never regard them with complacency. " Politics 
is an afterword," he declares — "a poor patching. 
We shall one day learn to supersede politics by 
education." He sympathizes with Lovelace's 
theory as to iron bars and stone walls, and holds 



204 CONFESSIONS AND CKITICTSMS. 

that freedom' and slavery are inward, not out- 
ward conditions. Slavery is not in circumstance, 
but in feeling ; you cannot eradicate the irons by 
external restrictions ; and the truest way to eman- 
cipate the slave would be to educate him to a 
comprehension of his inviolable dignity and free- 
dom as a human being. Amelioration of outward 
circumstances will be the effect, but can never be 
the means of mental and moral improvement. 
" Nothing is more disgusting," he affirms, general- 
izing the theme, " than the crowing about liberty 
by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant 
mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble 
like a 4 Declaration of Independence ' or the stat- 
ute right to vote." But, " Our America has a 
bad name for superficialness. Great men, great 
nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but 
perceivers of the terrors of life, and have nerved 
themselves to face it." He will not be deceived 
by the clamor of blatant reformers. " If an angry 
bigot assumes the bountiful cause of abolition, 
and comes to me with his last news from Barba- 
does, why should I not say to him : ' Go love thy 
infant ; love thy wood-chopper ; be good-natured 
and modest ; have that grace, and never varnish 
your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incred- 



EMEESON AS AN AMERICAN. 205 

ible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles 
off!'" 

He does not shrink from questioning the valid- 
ity of some of our pet institutions, as, for in- 
stance, universal suffrage. He reminds us that in 
old Egypt the vote of a prophet was reckoned 
equal to one hundred hands, and records his 
opinion that it was much underestimated. "Shall 
we, then," he asks, "judge a country by the 
majority or by the minority ? By the minority, 
surely ! 'Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the 
census, or by square miles of land, or other than 
by their importance to the mind of the time." 
The majority are unripe, and do not yet know 
their own opinion. He would not, however, 
counsel an organic alteration in this respect, be- 
lieving that, with the progress of enlightenment, 
such coarse constructions of human rights will ad- 
just themselves. He concedes the sagacity of the 
Fultons and Watts of politics, who, noticing that 
the opinion of the million was the terror of the 
world, grouped it on a level, instead of piling it 
into a mountain, and so contrived to make of this 
terror the most harmless and energetic form of a 
State. But, again, he would not have us regard 
the State as a finality, or as relieving any man of 



206 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

his individual responsibility for his actions and 
purposes. We are to confide in God — and not 
in our money, and in the State because it is guard 
of it. The Union itself has no basis but the good 
pleasure of the majority to be united. The wise 
and just men impart strength to the State, not re- 
ceive it; and, if all went down, they and their 
like would soon combine in a new and better 
constitution. Yet he will not have us forget that 
only by the supernatural is a man strong; nothing 
so weak as an egotist. We are mighty only as 
vehicles of a truth before which State and individ- 
ual are alike ephemeral. In this sense we, like 
other nations, shall have our kings and nobles — 
the leading and inspiration of the best; and he 
who would become a member of that nobility 
must obey his heart. 

Government, he observes, has been a fossil — it 
should be a plant ; statute law should express, not 
impede, the mind of mankind. In tracing the 
course of human political institutions, he finds 
feudalism succeeding monarchy, and this again 
followed by trade, the good and evil of which is 
that it would put everything in the market, 
talent, beauty, virtue, and man himself. By this 
means it has done its work ; it has faults and will 



EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 207 

end as the others. Its aristocracy need not be 
feared, for it can have no permanence, it is not 
entailed. In the time to come, he hopes to see us 
less anxious to be governed, in the technical 
sense ; each man shall govern himself in the in- 
terests of all ; government without any governor 
will be, for the first time, adamantine. Is not 
every man sometimes a radical in politics? Men 
are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or 
when they are most luxurious ; conservatism 
stands on man's limitations, reform on his infini- 
tude. The age of the quadruped is to go out; 
the age of the brain and the heart is to come in. 
We are too pettifogging and imitative in our 
legislative conceptions; the Legislature of this 
country should become more catholic and cosmo- 
politan than any other. Let us be brave and 
strong enough to trust in humanity; strong 
natures are inevitable patriots. The time, the 
age, what is that, but a few prominent persons 
and a few active persons who epitomize the 
times? There is a bribe possible for any finite 
will ; but the pure sympathy with universal ends 
is an infinite force, and cannot be bribed or bent. 
The world wants saviors and religions ; society is 
servile from want of will ; but there is a Destiny 



208 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

by which the human race is guided, the race 
never dying, the individual never spared ; its law- 
is, you shall have everything as a member, noth- 
ing to yourself. Referring to the communities of 
various kinds, which were so much in vogue some 
years ago, he holds such to be valuable, not for 
what they have done, but for the indication they 
give of the revolution that is on the way. They 
place great faith in mutual support, but it is only 
as a man puts off from himself all external sup- 
port and stands alone, that he is strong and will 
prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to his 
banner. A man ought to compare advantageously 
with a river, an oak, or a mountain. He must 
not shun whatever comes to him in the way of 
duty; the only path of escape is — performance. 
He must rely on Providence, but not in a timid 
or ecclesiastical spirit ; it is no use to dress up 
that terrific benefactor in a clean shirt and white 
neckcloth of a student of divinity. We shall 
come out well, whatever personal or political 
disasters may intervene. For here in America is 
the home of man. After deducting our pitiful 
politics — shall John or Jonathan sit in the chair 
and hold the purse ? — and making due allowance 
for our frivolities and insanities, there still remains 



EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 209 

an organic simplicity and liberty, which, when it 
loses its balance, redresses itself presently, and 
which offers to the human mind opportunities not 
known elsewhere. 

Whenever he touches upon the fundamental 
elements of social and rational life, it is always to 
enlarge and illuminate our conception of them. 
We are not wont to question the propriety of the 
sentiment of patriotism, for instance. We are to 
swear by our own lares and penates, and stand 
up for the American eagle, right or wrong. But 
Emerson instantly goes beneath this interpretation 
and exposes its crudity. The true sense of pa- 
triotism, according to him, is almost the reverse of 
its popular sense. He has no sympathy with that 
boyish egotism, hoarse with cheering for our side, 
for our State, for our town ; the right patriotism 
consists in the delight which springs from contrib- 
uting our peculiar and legitimate advantages to 
the benefit of humanity. Every foot of soil has 
its proper quality ; the grape on two sides of the 
fence has new flavors ; and so every acre on the 
globe, every family of men, every point of 
climate, has its distinguishing virtues. This be- 
ing admitted, however, Emerson will yield in 
patriotism to no one ; his only concern is that the 



210 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

advantages we contribute shall be the most 
instead of the least possible. " This country," he 
says, " does not lie here in the sun causeless, and 
though it may not be easy to define its influence, 
men feel already its emancipating quality in the 
careless self-reliance of the manners, in the free- 
dom of thought, in the direct roads by which 
grievances are reached and redressed, and even in 
the reckless and sinister politics, not less than in 
purer expressions. Bad as it is, this freedom 
leads onward and upward to a Columbia of 
thought and art, which is the last and endless end 
of Columbus's adventure." Nor is this poet of 
virtue and philosophy ever more truly patriotic, 
from his spiritual standpoint, than when he 
throws scorn and indignation upon his country's 
sins and frailties. " But who is he that prates of 
the culture of mankind, of better arts and life ? 
Go, blind worm, go — behold the famous States 
harrying Mexico with rifle and with knife ! Or 
who, with accent bolder, dare praise the freedom- 
loving mountaineer ? I found by thee, O rushing 
Contoocook ! and in thy valleys, Agiochook ! the 
jackals of the negro-holder. . . . What boots thy 
zeal, O glowing friend, that would indignant rend 
the northland from the South ? Wherefore ? To 



EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 211 

what good end? Boston Bay and Bunker Hill 
would serve things still — things are of the snake. 
The horseman serves the horse, the neat-herd 
serves the neat, the merchant serves the purse, 
the eater serves his meat; 'tis the day of the 
chattel, web to weave, and corn to grind ; things 
are in the saddle, and ride mankind ! " 

But I must not begin to quote Emerson's 
poetry; only it is worth noting that he, whose 
verse is uniformly so abstractly and intellectually 
beautiful, kindles to passion whenever his theme 
is of America. The loftiest patriotism never 
found more ardent and eloquent expression than 
in the hymn sung at the completion of the Con- 
cord monument, on the 19th of April, 1836. 
There is no rancor in it; no taunt of triumph; 
"the foe long since in silence slept"; but through- 
out there resounds a note of pure and deep re- 
joicing at the victory of justice over oppression, 
which Concord fight so aptly symbolized. In 
"Hamatreya" and u The Earth Song," another 
chord is struck, of calm, laconic irony. Shall we 
too, he asks, we Yankee farmers, descendants of 
the men who gave up all for freedom, go back to 
the creed outworn of mediaeval feudalism and 
aristocracy, and say, of the land that yields us 



212 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

its produce, "'Tis mine, my children's, and my 
name's " ? Earth laughs in flowers at our boyish 
boastfulness, and asks " How am I theirs if they 
cannot hold me, but I hold them?" "When I 
heard ' The Earth Song,' I was no longer brave ; 
my avarice cooled, like lust in the child of the 
grave." Or read "Monadnoc," and mark the 
insight and the power with which the significance 
and worth of the great facts of nature are inter- 
preted and stated. " Complement of human kind, 
having us at vantage still, our sumptuous indi- 
gence, oh, barren mound, thy plenties fill! We 
fool and prate ; thou art silent and sedate. To 
myriad kinds and times one sense the constant 
mountain doth dispense ; shedding on all its snows 
and leaves, one joy it joys, one grief it grieves. 
Thou seest, oh, watchman tall, our towns and 
races grow and fall, and imagest the stable good 
for which we all our lifetime grope ; and though 
the substance us elude, we in thee the shadow 
find." . . . "Thou dost supply the shortness of 
our days, and promise, on thy Founder's truth, 
long morrow to this mortal youth ! " I have ig- 
nored the versified form in these extracts, in order 
to bring them into more direct contrast with the 
writer's prose, and show that the poetry is inher- 



EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 213 

ent. No other poet, with whom I am acquainted, 
has caused the very spirit of a land, the mother of 
men, to express itself so adequately as Emerson 
has done in these pieces. Whitman falls short of 
them, it seems to me, though his effort is greater. 

Emerson is continually urging us to give heed 
to this grand voice of hills and streams, and to 
mould ourselves upon its suggestions. The diffi- 
culty and the anomaly are that we are not native ; 
that England is our mother, quite as much as 
Monadnoc; that we are heirs of memories and 
traditions reaching far beyond the times and the 
confines of the Republic. We cannot assume the 
splendid childlikeness of the great primitive races, 
and exhibit the hairy strength and unconscious 
genius that the poet longs to find in us. He re- 
marks somewhere that the culminating period of 
good in nature and the world is in just that mo- 
ment of transition, when the swarthy juices still 
flow plentifully from nature, but their astringency 
or acidity is got out by ethics and humanity. 

It was at such a period that Greece attained her 
apogee ; but our experience, it seems to me, must 
needs be different. Our story is not of birth, but 
of regeneration, a far more subtle and less obvious 
transaction. The Homeric California of which 



214 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

Bret Harte is the reporter does not seem to me in 
the closest sense American. It is a comparatively 
superficial matter — this savage freedom and raw 
poetry; it belongs to all pioneering life, where 
every man must stand for himself, and Judge 
Lynch strings up the defaulter to the nearest tree. 
But we are only incidentally pioneers in this 
sense ; and the characteristics thus impressed upon 
us will leave no traces in the completed American. 
" A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont," 
says Emerson, " who in turn tries all the profes- 
sions — who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a 
school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Con- 
gress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive 
years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet — is 
worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks 
abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not 
studying a ' profession,' for he does not postpone 
his life, but lives already." That is stirringly 
said : but, as a matter of fact, most of the Ameri- 
cans whom we recognize as great did not have 
such a history ; nor, if they had it, would they be 
on that account more American. On the other 
hand, the careers of men like Jim Fiske and Com- 
modore Vanderbilt might serve very well as illus- 
trations of the above sketch. If we must wait for 



EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 215 

our character until our geographical advantages 
and the absence of social distinctions manufacture 
it for us, we are likely to remain a long while in 
suspense. When our foreign visitors begin to 
evince a more poignant interest in Concord and 
Fifth Avenue than in the Mississippi and the Yel- 
lowstone, it may be an indication to us that we 
are assuming our proper position relative to our 
physical environment. " The land" says Emerson, 
" is a sanative and Americanizing influence which 
promises to disclose new virtues for ages to come." 
Well, when we are virtuous, we may, perhaps, 
spare our own blushes by allowing our topogra- 
phy, symbolically, to celebrate us, and when our 
admirers would worship the purity of our inten- 
tions, refer them to Walden Pond ; or to Mount 
Shasta, when they would expatiate upon our lofty 
generosity. It is, perhaps, true, meanwhile, that 
the chances of a man's leading a decent life are 
greater in a palace than in a pigsty. 

But this is holding our author too strictly to 
the letter of his message. And, at any rate, the 
Americanism of Emerson is better than anything 
that he has said in vindication of it. He is the 
champion of this commonwealth ; he is our future, 
living in our present, and showing the world, by 



216 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

anticipation, as it were, what sort of excellence 
we are capable of attaining. A nation that has 
produced Emerson, and can recognize in him bone 
of her bone and flesh of her flesh — and, still more, 
spirit of her spirit — that nation may look toward 
the coming age with security. But he has done 
more than thus to prophesy of his country ; he is 
electric and stimulates us to fulfil our destiny. 
To use a phrase of his own, we " cannot hear of 
personal vigor of any kind, great power of per- 
formance, without fresh resolution." Emerson 
helps us most in provoking us to help ourselves. 
The pleasantest revenge is that which we can 
sometimes take upon our great men in quoting of 
themselves what they have said of others. 

It is easy to be so revenged upon Emerson, be- 
cause he, more than most persons of such eminence, 
has been generous and cordial in his appreciation 
of all human worth. " If there should appear in 
the company," he observes, "some gentle soul who 
knows little of persons and parties, of Carolina or 
Cuba, but who announces a law that disposes these 
particulars, and so certifies me of the equity which 
checkmates every false player, bankrupts every 
self-seeker, and apprises me of my independence 
on any conditions of country, or time, or human 



EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 217 

body, that man liberates me. ... I am made 
immortal by apprehending my possession of incor- 
ruptible goods." Who can state the mission and 
effect of Emerson more tersely and aptly than 
those words do it? 

But, once more, he does not desire eulogiums, 
and it seems half ungenerous to force them upon 
him now that he can no longer defend himself. I 
prefer to conclude by repeating a passage charac- 
teristic of him both as a man and. as an American, 
and which, perhaps, conveys a sounder and health- 
ier criticism, both for us and for him, than any 
mere abject and nerveless admiration; for great 
men are great only in so far as they liberate us, 
and we undo their work in courting their tyranny. 
The passage runs thus : — 

" Let me remind the reader that I am only an 
experimenter. Do not set the least value on what 
I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if 
I pretended to settle anything as true or false. I 
unsettle all things. No facts to me are sacred ; 
none are profane. I simply experiment — an end- 
less seeker, with no Past at my back ! " 



CHAPTER X. 

MODERN MAGIC. 

Human nature enjoys nothing better than to 
wonder — to be mystified ; and it thanks and re- 
members those who have the skill to gratify 
this craving. The magicians of old knew that 
truth and conducted themselves accordingly. 
But our modern wonder-workers fail of their due 
influence, because, not content to perform their 
marvels, they go on to explain them. Merlin and 
Roger Bacon were greater public benefactors 
than Morse and Edison. Man is — and he always 
has been and will be — something else besides a 
pure intelligence : and science, in order to become 
really popular, must contrive to touch man some- 
where else besides on the purely intellectual side : 
it must remember that man is all heart, all hope, 
all fear, and all foolishness, quite as much as he is 
all brains. Otherwise, science can never expect 
to take the place of superstition, much less of re- 
ligion, in mankind's affection. In order to be a 

218 



MODEEN MAGIC. 219 

really successful man of science, it is first of all 
indispensable to make one's self master of every- 
thing in nature and in human nature that science 
is not. 

What must one do, in short, in order to become 
a magician ? I use the term, here, in its weight- 
iest sense. How to make myself visible and in- 
visible at will ? How to present myself in two or 
more places at once ? How answer your question 
before you ask it, and describe to you your most 
secret thoughts and actions? How shall I call 
spirits from the vasty deep, and make you see 
and hear and feel them? How paralyze your 
strength with a look, heal your wound with a 
touch, or cause your bullet to rebound harmless 
from my unprotected flesh ? How shall I walk on 
the air, sink through the earth, pass through stone 
walls, or walk, dry-shod, on the floor of the ocean ? 
How shall I visit the other side of the moon, jump 
through the ring of Saturn, and gather sunflowers 
in Sirius? There are persons now living who 
profess to do no less remarkable feats, and to re- 
gard them as incidental merely to achievements 
far more important. A school of hierophants or 
adepts is said to exist in Tibet, who, as a matter 
of daily routine, quite transcend everything that 



220 c:yrz^s::y? a>~d c?.:nc:s:-;s. 

~~r hare been accustomed to consider natural 
possibility. What is the course of study, what 
are the ways and means whereby such persons 
a : : : mj li&h such resoltB 1 

The conventional attitude towards such matters 
is, of course, that of unconditional scepticism. 
But it is pleasant, occasionally, to take an airing 
beyond the bounds of incredulity. For my own 
part, it is true, I must confess my inabilir :: 
believe in anything positively supernatural. The 
supernatural and the illusory are to my mind con- 
vertible terms: they cannot really exist or take 
place. Let us be sure, however, that we are 
agreed as to what supernatural means. If a ma- 
gician, before my eyes, transformed an old man 
into a little girl, I should call that supernatural ; 
and nothing should convince me that my senses 
had not been grossly deceived. But were the ma- 
gician to leave the room by passing through the 
solid wall, or "go out" like an exploding soap- 
bubble. — I might think what I please, but I 
should not venture to dogmatically pronounce 
the thing supernatural ; because :Lr phenomenon 
known as "matter '' is scientifically unknown, and 
therefore no one can tell what modifications it 
may not be susceptible ::: — no one. that is bo 



MODEEN MAGIC. 221 

say, except the person who, like the magician of 
our illustration, professes to possess, and (for aught 
I can affirm to the contrary) may actually possess 
a knowledge unshared by the bulk of mankind. 
The transformation of an old man into a little 
girl, on the other hand, would be a transaction 
involving the immaterial soul as well as the ma- 
terial body ; and if I do not know that that can- 
not take place, I am forever incapable of knowing 
anything. These are extreme examples, but they 
serve to emphasize an important distinction. 

The whole domain of magic, in short, occupies 
that anomalous neutral ground that intervenes 
between the facts of our senses and the truths of 
our intuitions. Fact and truth are not convert- 
ible terms ; they abide in two distinct planes, like 
thought and speech, or soul and body ; one may 
imply or involve the other, but can never demon- 
strate it. Experience and intuition together com- 
prehend the entire realm of actual and con- 
ceivable knowledge. Whatever contradicts both 
experience and intuition may, therefore, be pro- 
nounced illusion. But this neutral ground is the 
home of phenomena which intuition does not 
deny, and which experience has not confirmed. 
It is still a wide zone, though not so wide as it 



222 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

was a hundred years ago, or fifty, or even ten. It 
narrows every day, as science, or the classification 
of experience, expands. Are we, then, to look 
for a time when the zone shall have dwindled to 
a mathematical line, and magic confess itself to 
have been nothing but the science of an advanced 
school of investigators? Will the human intel- 
lect acquire a power before which all mysteries 
shall become transparent? Let us dwell upon 
this question a little longer. 

A mystery that is a mystery can never, hu- 
manly speaking, become anything else. Instances 
of such mysteries can readily be adduced. The 
universe itself is built upon them and is the 
greatest of them. They lie before the threshold 
and at the basis of all existence. For example : — 
here is a lump of compact, whitish, cheese-like sub- 
stance, about as much as would go into a thimble. 
From this I profess to be able to produce a 
gigantic, intricate structure, sixty feet in height 
and diameter, hard, solid, and enduring, which 
shall furthermore possess the power of extending 
and multiplying itself until it covers the whole 
earth, and even all the earths in the universe, if 
it could reach them. Is such a profession as this 
credible ? It is entirely credible, as soon as I 



MODERN MAGIC. 223 

paraphrase it by saying that I propose to plant an 
acorn. And yet all magic has no mystery which 
is so wonderful as this universal mystery of 
growth : and the only reason we are not lost in 
amazement at it is that it goes quietly on all the 
time, and perfects itself under uniform conditions. 
But let me eliminate from the phenomenon the 
one element of time — which is logically the least 
essential factor in the product, unreal and arbi- 
trary, based on the revolution of the earth, and 
conceivably variable to any extent — grant me 
this, and the world would come to see me do the 
miracle. But, with time or without it, the mys- 
tery is just as mysterious. 

Natural mysteries, then, — the mysteries of life, 
death, creation, growth, — do not fall under our 
present consideration : they are beyond the legiti- 
mate domain of magic: and no intellectual devel- 
opment to which we may hereafter attain will 
bring us a step nearer their solution. But with the 
problems proper to magic, the case is different. 
Magic is distinctively not Divine, but human : a 
finite conundrum, not an Infinite enigma. If 
there has ever been a magician since the world 
began, then all mankind may become magicians, 
if they will give the necessary time and trouble. 



224 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

And yet, magic is not simply an advanced region 
of the path which science is pursuing. Science is 
concerned with results, — with material phenom- 
ena; whereas magic is, primarily, the study of 
causes, or of spiritual phenomena ; or, to use 
another definition, — of phenomena which the 
senses perceive, not in themselves, but only in 
their results. So long as we restrict ourselves to 
results, our activity is confined to analysis ; but 
when we begin to investigate causes, we are on 
the road not only to comprehend results, but 
(within limits) to modify or produce them. 

Science, however, blocks our advance in this 
direction by denying, or at least refusing to admit, 
the existence of the spiritual world, or world of 
causes : because, being spiritual, it is not sensible, 
or cognizable in sense. Science admits only ma- 
terial causes, or the changes wrought in matter by 
itself. If we ask what is the cause of a material 
cause, we are answered that it is a supposed entity 
called Force, concerning which there is nothing 
further to be known. 

At this point, then, argument (on the material 
plane) comes to an end, and speculation or as- 
sumption begins. Science answers its own ques- 
tions, but neither can nor will answer any others. 



MODERN MAGIC. 225 

And upon what pretence do we ask any others ? 
We ask them upon two grounds. The first is 
that some people, — we might even say, most 
people, — would be glad to believe in supersen- 
suous existence, and are always on the alert to 
examine any plausible hypothesis pointing in 
that direction: and secondly, there exists a vast 
amount of testimony (we need not call it evi- 
dence) tending to show that the supersensuous 
world has been discovered, and that it endows its 
discoverers with sundry notable advantages. Of 
course, we are not obliged to credit this testi- 
mony, unless we want to : and — for some reason, 
never fully explained — a great many people who 
accept natural mysteries quite amiably become 
indignant when requested to examine mysteries 
of a much milder order. But it is not my inten- 
tion to discuss the limits of the probable ; but to 
swallow as much as possible first, and endeavor to 
account for it afterwards. 

There is, as every reader knows, a class of phe- 
nomena — such as hypnotism, trance, animal mag- 
netism, and so forth — the occurrence of which 
science has conceded, though failing as yet to 
offer any intelligent explanation of them. It is 
suggested that they are peculiar states of the 



226 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

brain and nerve-centres, physical in their nature 
and origin, though evading our present physical 
tests. Be that as it may, they afford a capital in- 
troduction to the study of magic ; if, indeed, they, 
and a few allied phenomena, do not comprise the 
germs of the whole matter. Apropos of this 
subject, a society has lately been organized in 
London, with branches on the Continent and in 
this country, composed of scientific men, Fellows 
of the Royal Society, members of Parliament, pro- 
fessors, and literary men, calling themselves the 
" Psychical Research Society," and making it their 
business to test and investigate these very mar- 
vels, under the most stringent scientific condi- 
tions. But the capacity to be deceived of the 
bodily senses is almost unlimited; in fact, we 
know that they are incapable of telling us the 
ultimate truth on any subject; and we are able to 
get along with them only because we have found 
their misinformation to be sufficiently uniform 
for most practical purposes. But once admit that 
the- origin of these phenomena is not on the 
physical plane, and then, if we are to give any 
weight at all to them, it can be only from a spirit- 
ual standpoint. In other words, unless we can 
approach such questions by an a priori route, we 



MODERN MAGIC. 227 

might as well let them alone. We can reason 
from spirit to body — from mind to matter — but 
we can never reverse that process, and from mat- 
ter evolve mind. The reason is that matter is 
not found to contain mind, but is only acted 
upon by it, as inferior by superior ; and we can- 
not get out of the bag more than has been put 
into it. The acorn (to use our former figure) can 
never explain the oak; but the oak readily ac- 
counts for the acorn. It may be doubted, there- 
fore, whether the Psychical Research Society can 
succeed in doing more than to give a respectable 
endorsement to a perplexing possibility, — so long 
as they adhere to the inductive method. Should 
they, however, abandon the inductive method for 
the deductive, they will forfeit the allegiance of 
all consistently scientific minds ; and they may, 
perhaps, make some curious contributions to phil- 
osophy. At present, they appear to be astride 
the fence between philosophy and science, as if 
they hoped in some way to make the former sat- 
isfy the hitter's demands. But the difference be- 
tween the evidence that demonstrates a fact and 
the evidence that confirms a truth is, once more, a 
difference less of degree than of kind. We can 
never obtain sensible verification of a proposition 



228 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

that transcends sense. We must accept it without 
material proof, or not at all. "We may believe, for 
instance, that Creation is the work of an intel- 
ligent Divine Being ; or we may disbelieve it ; 
but we can never prove it. If we do believe it, 
innumerable confirmations of it meet us at every 
turn : but no such confirmations, and no multipli- 
cation of them, can persuade a disbeliever. For 
belief is ever incommunicable from without; it 
can be generated only from within. The term 
" belief " cannot be applied to our recognition of 
a physical fact : we do not believe in that — we 
are only sensible of it. 

In this connection, a few words will be in order 
concerning what is called Spiritism, — a subject 
which has of late years been exciting a good deal 
of remark. Its disciples claim for it the dignity of 
a new and positive revelation, — a revelation to 
sense of spiritual being. Now, the entire universe 
may be described as a revelation to sense of spirit- 
ual being — for those who happen to believe a 
priori, or from spontaneous inward conviction, in 
spiritual being. We may believe a man's body, 
for example, to be the effect of which his soul is 
the cause ; but no one can reach that conviction 
by the most refined dissection of the bodily tis- 



MODERN MAGIC. 229 

sues. How, then, does the spiritists' Positive 
Revelation help the matter? Their answer is 
that the physical universe is a permanent and 
orderly phenomenon which (setting aside the 
problem of its First Cause) fully accounts for 
itself; whereas the phenomena of Spiritism, such 
as rapping, table-tipping, materializing, and so 
forth, are, if not supernatural, at any rate extra- 
natural. They occur in consequence of a con- 
scious effort to bring them about; they cease 
when that effort is discontinued ; they abound in 
indications of being produced by independent in- 
telligencies ; they are inexplicable upon any recog- 
nized theory of physics ; and, therefore, there is 
nothing for it but to regard them as spiritual. 
And what then ? Then, of course, there must be 
spirits, and a life after the death of the body; 
and the great question of Immortality is answered 
in the affirmative ! 

Let us, for the sake of argument, concede that 
the manifestations upon which the Spiritists 
found their claims are genuine : that they are or 
can be produced without fraud ; and let us then 
enquire in what respect our means for the conver- 
sion of the sceptic are improved. In the first 
place we find that all the manifestations — be their 



230 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

cause what it may — can occur only on the physi- 
cal plane. However much the origin of the 
phenomena may perplex us, the phenomena 
themselves must be purely material, in so far as 
they are perceptible at all. "Raps" are audible 
according to the same laws of vibration as other 
sounds : the tilting table is simply a material body 
displaced by an adequate agency; the materialized 
hand or face is nothing but physical substance 
assuming form. Plainly, therefore, we have as 
much right to ascribe a spiritual source to such 
phenomena as we have to ascribe a spiritual 
source to the ordinary phenomena of nature, such 
as a tree or a man's body, — just as much right — 
and no more ! Consequently, we are no nearer 
converting our sceptic than we were at the out- 
set. He admits the physical manifestation : there 
is no intrinsic novelty about that : but when we 
proceed to argue that the manifestations are 
wrought by spirits, he points out to us that this is 
sheer assumption on our part. " I have not seen 
a spirit," he says : " I have not heard one ; I have 
not felt one ; nor is it possible that my bodily 
senses' should perceive anything that is not at 
least as physical as they are. I have witnessed 
certain transactions effected by means unknown 



MODERN MAGIC. 231 

to me — possibly by the action of a natural law not 
yet fully expounded by science. If there was any- 
thing spiritual in the affair, it has not been mani- 
fest to my apprehension : and I must decline to 
lend my countenance to any such pretensions." 

That would be the reply of the sceptic who was 
equal to the emergency. But let us suppose that 
he is not equal to it : that he is a weak-kneed, 
impressionable person, with a tendency to jump 
at conclusions ; and that he is scared or mystified 
into believing that " spirits " may be at the bot- 
tom of it. What, then, will be the character of 
the faith which the Positive Revelation has 
furnished him ? He has discovered that existence 
continues, in some fashion, after the death of the 
body. He has learned that there may be such a 
thing as — not immortality exactly, but — post- 
mortem consciousness. He has been saddled with 
the conviction that the other world is full of rest- 
less ghosts, who come shuddering back from their 
cold emptiness, and try to warm themselves in the 
borrowed flesh and blood, and with the purblind 
selfishness and curiosity of us who still remain 
here. " Have faith : be not impatient : the con- 
ditions are unfavorable : but we are working for 
you! " — such is the constant burden of the com- 



232 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

munications. But, if there be a God, why must 
our relations with him be complicated by the in- 
terference of such forlorn prevaricators and 
amateur Paracletes as these ? we do not wish to 
be " worked for," — to be carried heavenward on 
some one else's shoulders: but to climb thither 
by God's help and our own will, or to stay were 
we are. Moreover, by what touchstone shall we 
test the veracity of the self-appointed purveyors of 
this Positive Revelation? Are we to believe what 
they say, because they have lost their bodies? If 
life teaches us anything, it is that God does above 
all things respect the spiritual freedom of his 
creatures. He does not terrify and bully us into 
acknowledging Him by ghostly juggleries in 
darkened rooms, and by vapid exhibitions ad- 
dressed to our outward senses. He approaches 
each man in the innermost sacred audience-cham- 
ber of his heart, and there shows him good and 
evil, truth and falsehood, and bids him choose. 
And that choice, if made aright, becomes a genu- 
ine and undying belief, because it was made in 
freedom, unbiassed by external threats and cajo- 
leries. Such belief is, itself, immortal^, — some- 
thing as distinct from post-mortem consciousness 
as wisdom is distinct from mere animal intelli- 



MODERN MAGIC. 233 

gence. On the whole, therefore, there seems to 
belittle real worth in Spiritism, even accepting it 
at its own valuation. The nourishment it yields 
the soul is too meagre ; and — save on that one 
bare point of life beyond the grave, which might 
just as easily prove an infinite curse as an infinite 
blessing — it affords no trustworthy news whatever. 

But these objections do not apply to magic 
proper. Magic seems to consist mainly in the 
control which mind may exceptionally exercise 
over matter. In hypnotism, the subject abjectly 
believes and obeys the operator. If he be told 
that he cannot step across a chalk mark on the 
floor, he cannot step across it. He dissolves in 
tears or explodes with laughter, according as the 
operator tells him he has cause for merriment or 
tears : and if he be assured that the water he 
drinks is Madeira wine or Java coffee, he has no 
misgiving that such is not the case. 

To say that this state of things is brought 
about by the- exercise of the operator's will, is not 
to explain the phenomenon, but to put it in dif- 
ferent terms. What is the will, and how does it 
produce such a result ? Here is a man who be- 
lieves, at the word of command, that the thing 
which all the rest of the world calls a chair is a 



234 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

horse. How is such misapprehension on his part 
possible ? our senses are our sole means of know- 
ing external objects : and this man's senses seem 
to confirm — at least they by no means correct — 
his persuasion that a given object is something 
very different. Could we solve this puzzle, we 
should have done something towards gaining an 
insight into the philosophy of magic. 

We observe, in the first place, that the rationale 
of hypnotism, and of trance in general, is distinct 
from that of memory and of imagination, and 
even from that of dreams. It resembles these 
only in so far as it involves a quasi-perception of 
something not actually present or existent. But 
memory and imagination never mislead us into 
mistaking their suggestions for realities : while in 
dreams, the dreamer's fancy alone is active ; the 
bodily faculties are not in action. In trance, 
however, the subject may appear to be, to all 
intents and purposes, awake. Yet this state, un- 
like the others, is abnormal. The brain seems to 
be in a passive, or, at any rate, in a detached con- 
dition ; it cannot carry out or originate ideas, nor 
can it examine an idea as to its truth or falsehood. 
Furthermore, it cannot receive or interpret the 
reports of its own bodily senses. In short, its 



MODERN MAGIC. 235 

relations with the external world are suspended : 
and since the body is a part of the external 
world, the brain can no longer control the body's 
movements. 

Bodily movements are, however, to some extent, 
automatic. Given a certain stimulus in the brain 
or nerve-centres, and certain corresponding mus- 
cular contractions follow: and this whether or 
not the stimulus be applied in a normal manner. 
Although, therefore, the entranced brain cannot 
spontaneously control the body, yet if we can 
apply an independent stimulus to it, the body will 
make a fitting and apparently intelligent response. 
The reader has doubtless seen those ingenious 
pieces of mechanism which are set in motion by 
dropping into an orifice a coin or pellet. Now, 
could we drop into the passive brain of an en- 
tranced person the idea that a chair is a horse, for 
instance, — the person would give every sensible 
indication of having adopted that figment as a 
fact. 

But how (since he can no longer communicate 
with the world by means of his senses) is this idea 
to be insinuated? The man is magnetized — that 
is to say, insulated ; how can we have intercourse 
with him ? 



236 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

Experiments show that this can be effected only 
through the magnetizer. Asleep towards the rest 
of the world, towards him the entranced person is 
awake. Not awake, however, as to the bodily- 
senses; neither the magnetizer nor any one else 
can approach by that route. It is true that, 
if the magnetizer speaks to him, he knows what is 
said: but he does not hear physically; because 
he perceives the unspoken thought just as readily. 
But since whatever does not belong to his body 
must belong to his soul (or mind, if that term be 
preferable), it follows that the magnetizer must 
communicate with the magnetized on the mental 
or spiritual plane ; that is, immediately, or with- 
out the intervention of the body. 

Let us review the position we have reached : — 
We have an entranced or magnetized person, — a 
person whose mind, or spirit, has, by a certain 
process, been so far withdrawn from conscious 
communion with his own bodily senses as to dis- 
able him from receiving through them any tidings 
from the external world. He is not, however, 
wholly withdrawn from his body, for, in that case, 
the body would be dead; whereas, in fact, its 
organic or animal life continues almost unim- 
paired. He is therefore neither out of the body 



MODERN MAGIC. 237 

nor in it, but in an anomalous region midway 
between the two, — a state in which he can receive 
no sensuous impressions from the physical world, 
nor be put in conscious communication with the 
spiritual world through any channel — save odc 

This one exception is, as we have seen, the 
person who magnetized him. The magnetizer is, 
then, the one and only medium through which 
the person magnetized can obtain impressions: 
and these impressions are conveyed directly from 
the mind, or spirit, of the magnetizer to that of the 
magnetized. Let us note, further, that the former 
is not, like the latter, in a semi-disembodied state, 
but is in the normal exercise of his bodily func- 
tions and faculties. He possesses, consequently, 
his normal ability to originate ideas and to impart 
them: and whatever ideas he chooses to impart 
to the magnetized person, the latter is fain pas- 
sively and implicitly to accept. And having so 
received them, they descend naturally into the 
automatic mechanism of the body, and are by it 
mechanically interpreted or enacted. 

So far, the theory is good : but something seems 
amiss in the working. We find that a certain 
process frequently issues in a certain effect : but 
we do not yet know why this should be the case. 



238 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

Some fundamental link is wanting ; and this link 
is manifestly a knowledge of the true relations 
between mind and matter : of the laws to which 
the mental or spiritual world is subject: of what 
nature itself is : and of what Creation means. 
Let us cast a glance at these fundamental sub- 
jects ; for they are the key without which the 
secrets of magic must remain locked and hidden. 

In common speech we call the realm of the 
material universe, Creation ; but philosophy 
denies its claim to that title. Man alone is Cre- 
ation : everything else is appearance. The uni- 
verse appears, because man exists : he implies the 
universe, but is not implied by it. We may assist 
our metaphysics, here, by a physical illustration. 
Take a glass prism and hold in the sunlight be- 
fore a white surface. Let the prism represent 
man : the sun, man's Creator: and the seven-hued 
ray cast by the prism, nature, or the material 
universe. Now, if we remove the light, the ray 
vanishes : it vanishes, also, if we take away the 
prism : but so long as the sun and the prism — 
God and man — remain in their mutual relation, 
so long must the rainbow nature appear. Nature, 
in short, is not God ; neither is it man ; but it is 
the inevitable concomitant or expression of the 



MODERN MAGIC. 239 

creative attitude of God towards man. It is the 
shadow of the elements of which humanity or 
human nature is composed : or, shall we say, it is 
the apparition in sense of the spiritual being of 
mankind, — not, be it observed, of the being of 
any individual or of any aggregation of indi- 
viduals; but of humanity as a whole. For this 
reason, also, is nature orderly, complete, and per- 
manent, — that it is conditioned not upon our frail 
and faulty personalities, but upon our impersonal, 
universal human nature, in which is transacted 
the miracle of God's incarnation, and through 
which He forever shines. 

Besides Creator and creature, nothing else can 
be ; and whatever else seems to be, must be only 
a seeming. Nature, therefore, is the shadow of a 
shade, but it serves an indispensable use. For 
since there can be no direct communication be- 
tween finite and Infinite — God and man — a 
medium or common ground is needed, where they 
may meet ; and nature, the shadow which the 
Infinite causes the finite to project, is just that 
medium. Man, looking upon this shadow, mis- 
takes it for real substance, serving him for foot- 
hold and background, and assisting him to attain 
self-consciousness. God, on the other hand, finds 



240 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

in nature the means of revealing Himself to His 
creature without compromising the creature's free- 
dom. Man supposes the universe to be a physi- 
cal structure made by God in space and time, and 
in some region of which He resides, at a safe dis- 
tance from us His creatures : whereas, in truth, 
God is distant from us only so far as we remove 
ourselves from our own inmost intuitions of truth 
and good. 

But what is that substance or quality which 
underlies and gives homogeneity to the varying 
forms of nature, so that they seem to us to own a 
common origin? — what is that logical abstrac- 
tion upon which we have bestowed the name of 
matter? scientific analysis finds matter only as 
forms, never as itself: until, in despair, it invents 
an atomic theory, and lets it go at that. But if, 
discarding the scientific method, we question 
matter from the philosophical standpoint, we shall 
find it less obdurate. 

Man, considered as a mind or spirit, consists of 
volition and intelligence ; or, what is the same, 
of emotion or affection, and of the thoughts which 
are created by this affection. Nothing can be 
affirmed of man as a spirit which does not fall un- 
der one or other of these two parts. Now, a crea- 



MODERN MAGIC. 241 

ture consisting solely of affections and thoughts 
must, of course, have something to love and to 
think about. Man's final destiny is no doubt to 
love and consider his Creator ; but that can only 
be after a reactionary or regenerative process has 
begun in him. Meanwhile, he must love and 
consider the only other available object — that is, 
himself. Manifestly, however, in order to bestow 
this attention upon himself, he must first be made 
aware of his own existence. In order to effect 
this, something must be added to man as spirit, 
enabling him to discriminate between the subject 
thinking and loving, and the object loved and 
thought of. This additional something, again, in 
order to fulful its purpose, must be so devised as 
not to appear an addition: it must seem even 
more truly the man than the man himself. It 
must, therefore, perfectly represent or correspond 
to the spiritual form and constitution ; so that the 
thoughts and affections of the spirit may enter in- 
to it as into their natural home and continent. 

This continent or vehicle of the mind is the 
human body. The body has two aspects, — sub- 
stance and form, answering to the two aspects of 
the mind, — affection and thought: and affection 
finds its incarnation or correspondence in sub- 



242 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

stance ; and thought, in form. The mind, in short, 
realizes itself in terms of its reflection in the 
body, much as the body realizes itself in terms 
of its reflection in the looking-glass : but it does 
more than this, for it identifies itself with this 
its image. And how is this identification made 
possible ? 

It is brought about by the deception of sense, 
which is the medium of communication between 
the spiritual and the material man. Until this 
miraculous medium is put in action, there can be 
no conscious relation between these two planes, 
admirably as they are adapted to each other. 
Sense is spiritual on one side and material on 
the other : but it is only on the material side that 
it gathers its reports : on the spiritual side it only 
delivers them. Every one of the five messengers 
whereby we are apprised of external existence 
brings us an earthly message only. And since 
these messengers act spontaneously, and since the 
mind's only other source of knowledge is intui- 
tion, which cannot be sensuously confirmed, — it 
is little wonder if man has inclined to the persua- 
sion that what is highest in him is but an attri- 
bute of what is lowest, and that when the body 
dies, the soul must follow it into nothingness. 



MODERN MAGIC. 243 

Creative energy, being infinite, passes through 
the world of causes to the world of effects — 
through the spiritual to the physical plane. Mat- 
ter is therefore the symbol of the ultimate of crea- 
tive activity ; it is the negative of God. As God 
is infinite, matter is finite ; as He is life, it is 
death; as He is real, it is unreal; as He reveals, 
matter veils. And as the relation of God to 
man's spirit is constant and eternal, so is the 
physical quality of matter fixed and perma- 
nent. 

Now, in order to arrive at a comprehension of 
what matter is in itself, let us descend from the 
general to the specific, and investigate the philo- 
sophical elements of a pebble, for instance. A 
pebble is two things : it is a mineral : and it is a 
particular concrete example of mineral. In its 
mineral aspect, it is out of space and time, and is 
— not a fact, but — a truth; a perception of the 
mind. In so far as it is mineral, therefore, it has 
no relation to sense, but only to thought : and on 
the other hand, in so far as it is a particular con- 
crete pebble, it is cognizable by sense but not by 
thought ; for what is in sense is out of thought : 
the one supersedes the other. But if sense thus 
absorbs matter, so as to be philosophically indis- 



244 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

tinguishable from it, we are constrained to iden- 
tify matter with our sensuous perception of it : 
and if our exemplary pebble had nothing but its 
material quality to depend upon, it would cease 
to exist not only to thought, but to sense like- 
wise. Its metaphysical aspect, in short, is the 
only reality appertaining to it. Matter, then, 
may be defined as the impact upon sense of that 
prismatic ray which we have called nature. 

To apply this discussion to the subject in hand : 
Magic is a sort of parody of reality. And when 
we recognize that Creation proceeds from within 
outwards, or endogenously ; and that matter is not 
the objective but the subjective side of the uni- 
verse, we are in a position to perceive that in 
order magically to control matter, we must apply 
our efforts not to matter itself, but to our own 
minds. The natural world affects us from with- 
out inwards: the magical world affects us from 
within outwards : instead of objects suggesting 
ideas, ideas are made to suggest objects. And as, 
in the former case, when the object is removed 
the idea vanishes ; so in the latter case, when 
the idea is removed, the object vanishes. Both 
objects are illusions ; but the illusion in the first 
instance is the normal illusion of sense, whereas 



MODEEK MAGIC. 245 

in the second instance it is the abnormal illusion 
of mind. 

The above argument can at best serve only as a 
hint to such as incline seriously to investigate the 
subject, and perhaps as a touchstone for testing 
the validity of a large and noisy mass of preten- 
sions which engage the student at the outset 
of his enquiry. Many of these pretensions are 
the result of ignorance ; many of deliberate intent 
to deceive ; some, again, of erroneous philosophi- 
cal theories. The Tibetan adepts seem to belong 
either to the second or to the last of these catego- 
ries, — or, perhaps, to an impartial mingling of 
all three. They import a cumbrous machinery of 
auras, astral bodies, and elemental spirits; they 
divide man into seven principles, nature into 
seven kingdoms; they regard spirit as a refined 
form of matter, and matter as the one absolute 
fact of the universe, — the alpha and omega of all 
things. They deny a supreme Deity, but hold 
out hopes of a practical deityship for the majority 
of the human race. In short, their philosophy 
appeals to the most evil instincts of the soul, and 
has the air of being ex-post-facto ; whenever they 
run foul of a prodigy, they invent abitrarily a 
fanciful explanation of it. But it will be found, 



246 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

I think, that the various phases of hypnotism, 
and a systematized use of spiritism, will amply 
account for every miracle they actually bring to 
pass. 

Upon the whole, a certain vulgarity is insepara- 
ble from even the most respectable forms of 
magic, — an atmosphere of tinsel, of ostentation, of 
big cry and little wool. A child might have told 
us that matter is not almighty, that minds are 
sometimes transparent to one another, that love 
and faith can work wonders. And we also know 
that, in this mortal life, our means are exquisitely 
adapted to our ends ; and that we can gain no 
solid comfort or advantage by striving to elbow 
our way a few inches further into the region of 
the occult and abnormal. Magic, however spe- 
cious its achievements, is only a mockery of the 
Creative power, and exposes its unlikeness to 
it. "It is the attribute of natural existence," a 
profound writer has said, " to be a form of use to 
something higher than itself, so that whatever 
does not, either potentially or actually, possess 
within it this soul of use, does not honestly be- 
long to nature, but is a sensational effect pro- 
duced upon the individual intelligence." * 

* Henry James, in " Society the Redeemed Form of Man." 



MODERN MAGIC. 247 

No one can overstep the order and modesty of 
general existence without bringing himself into 
perilous proximity to subjects more profound and 
sacred than the occasion warrants. Life need not 
be barren of mystery and miracle to any one of 
us ; but they shall be such tender mysteries and 
instructive miracles as the devotion of mother- 
hood, and the blooming of spring. We are too 
close to Infinite love and wisdom to play pranks 
before it, and provoke comparison between our 
paltry juggleries and its omnipotence and maj- 
esty. 



CHAPTER XL 

AMERICAN WILD ANIMALS IN" ART. 

The hunter and the sportsman are two very 
different persons. The hunter pursues animals 
because he loves them and sympathizes with 
them, and kills them as the champions of chivalry 
used to slay one another — courteously, fairly, 
and with admiration and respect. To stalk and 
shoot the elk and the grizzly bear is to him what 
wooing and winning a beloved maiden would be 
to another man. Far from being the foe or 
exterminator of the game he follows, he, more 
than any one else, is their friend, vindicator, and 
confidant. A strange mutual ardor and under- 
standing unites him with his quarry. He loves 
the mountain sheep and the antelope, because 
they can escape him ; the panther and the bear, 
because they can destroy him. His relations 
with them are clean, generous, and manly. And 
on the other hand, the wild animals whose wild- 
ness can never be tamed, whose inmost principle 

248 



AMERICAN WILD ANIMALS IN ART. 249 

of existence it is to be apart and unapproachable, 

— those creatures who may be said to cease to be 
when they cease to be intractable, — seem, after 
they have eluded their pursuer to the utmost, or 
fought him to the death, to yield themselves to 
him with a sort of wild contentment — as if they 
were glad to admit the sovereignty of man, though 
death come with the admission. The hunter, in 
short, asks for his happiness only to be alone with 
what he hunts ; the sportsman, after his day's 
sport, must needs hasten home to publish the size 
of the "bag," and to wring from his fellow-men 
the glory and applause which he has not the 
strength and simplicity to find in the game itself. 

But if the true hunter is rare, the union of the 
hunter and the artist is rarer still. It demands not 
only the close familiarity, the loving observation, 
and the sympathy, but also the faculty of creation 

— the eye which selects what is constructive and 
beautiful, and passes over what is superfluous and 
inharmonious, and the hand skilful to carry out 
what the imagination conceives. In the man whose 
work I am about to consider, these qualities are 
developed in a remarkable degree, though it was 
not until he was a man grown, and had fought 
with distinction through the civil war, that he 



250 CONFESSIONS AND CEITICISMS. 

himself became aware of the artistic power that 
was in him. The events of his life, could they be 
rehearsed here, would form a tale of adventure and 
vicissitude more varied and stirring than is often 
found in fiction. He has spent by himself days 
and weeks in the vast solitudes of our western 
prairies and southern morasses. He has been the 
companion of trappers and frontiersmen, the 
friend and comrade of Indians, sleeping side by 
side with them in their wigwams, running the 
rapids in their canoes, and riding with them in 
the hunt. He has met and overcome the panther 
and the grizzly single-handed, and has pursued 
the flying cimmaron to the snowy summits of the 
Rocky Mountains, and brought back its crescent 
horns as a trophy. He has fought and slain the 
gray wolf with no other weapons than his hands 
and teeth ; and at night he has lain concealed by 
lonely tarns, where the wild coyote came to 
patter and bark and howl at the midnight moon. 
His name and achievements are familiar to the 
dwellers in those savage regions, whose estimate 
of a man is based, not upon his social and finan- 
cial advantages, but upon what he is and can do. 
Yet he is not one who wears his merit out- 
wardly. His appearance, indeed, is striking; 



AMERICAN WILD ANIMALS IN ART. 251 

tall and athletic, broad-shouldered and stout- 
limbed, with the long, elastic step of the 
moccasined Indian, and something of the Indian's 
reticence and simplicity. But he can with diffi- 
culty be brought to allude to his adventures, and 
is reserved almost to the point of ingenuity on all 
that concerns himself or redounds to his credit. 
It is only in familiar converse with friends that 
the humor, the cultivation, the knowledge, and 
the social charm of the man appear, and his 
marvellous gift of vivid and picturesque narration 
discloses itself. But, in addition to all this, or 
above it all, he is the only great animal sculptor 
of his time, the successor of the French Barye, 
and (as any one may satisfy himself who will take 
the trouble to compare their works) the equal of 
that famous artist in scope and treatment of ani- 
mal subjects, and his superior in knowledge and 
in truth and power of conception. It would be 
a poor compliment to call Edward Kemeys the 
American Barye ; but Barye is the only man whose 
animal sculptures can bear comparison with Mr. 
Kemeys's. 

Of Mr. Kemeys's productions, a few are to be 
seen at his studio, 133 West Fifty-third Street, 
New York city. These are the models, in clay 



252 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

or plaster, as they came fresh from the artist's 
hand. From this condition they can either be 
enlarged to life or colossal size, for parks or pub- 
lic buildings, or cast in bronze in their present 
dimensions for the enrichment of private houses. 
Though this collection includes scarce a tithe of 
what the artist has produced, it forms a series of 
groups and figures which, for truth to nature, 
artistic excellence, and originality, are actually 
unique. So unique are they, indeed, that the 
uneducated eye does not at first realize their 
really immense value. Nothing; like this little 
sculpture gallery has been seen before, and it is 
very improbable that there will ever again be a 
meeting of conditions and qualities adequate to 
reproducing such an exhibition. For we see 
here not merely, nor chiefly, the accurate rep- 
resentation of the animal's external aspect, but — 
what is vastly more difficult to seize and por- 
tray — the essential animal character or temper- 
ament which controls and actuates the animal's 
movements and behavior. Each one of Mr. 
Kemeys's figures gives not only the form and 
proportions of the animal, according to the nicest 
anatomical studies and measurements, but it is 
the speaking embodiment of profound insight into 



AMERICAN WILD ANIMALS IN ART. 253 

that animal's nature and knowledge of its habits. 
The spectator cannot long examine it without 
feeling that he has learned much more of its char- 
acteristics and genius than if he had been stand- 
ing in front of the same animal's cage at the 
Zoological Gardens; for here is an artist who 
understands how to translate pose into meaning, 
and action into utterance, and to select those 
poses and actions which convey the broadest and 
most comprehensive idea of the subject's pre- 
vailing traits. He not only knows what posture 
or movement the anatomical structure of the 
animal renders possible, but he knows precisely 
in what degree such posture or movement is 
modified by the animal's physical needs and in- 
stincts. In other words, he always respects the 
modesty of nature, and never yields to the temp- 
tation to be dramatic and impressive at the 
expense of truth. Here is none of Barye's ex- 
aggeration, or of Landseer's sentimental effort to 
humanize animal nature. Mr. Kemeys has rightly 
perceived that animal nature is not a mere con- 
traction of human nature ; but that each animal, 
so far as it owns any relation to man at all, rep- 
resents the unimpeded development of some par- 
ticular element of man's nature. Accordingly, 



254 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

animals must be studied and portrayed solely 
upon their own basis and within their own limits ; 
and he who approaches them with this under- 
standing will find, possibly to his surprise, that 
the theatre thus afforded is wide and varied 
enough for the exercise of his best ingenuity and 
capacities. At first, no doubt, the simple animal 
appears too simple to be made artistically in- 
teresting, apart from this or that conventional or 
imaginative addition. The lion must be pre- 
sented, not as he is, but as vulgar anticipation 
expects him to be ; not with the savageness and 
terror which are native to him, but with the 
savageness and terror which those who have 
trembled and fled at the echo of his roar invest 
him with, — which are quite another matter. Zoo- 
logical gardens and museums have their uses, but 
they cannot introduce us to wild animals as they 
really are ; and the reports of those who have 
caught terrified or ignorant glimpses of them in 
their native regions will mislead us no less in 
another direction. Nature reveals her secrets 
only to those who have faithfully and rigorously 
submitted to the initiation; but to them she 
shows herself marvellous and inexhaustible. The 
" simple animal " avouches his ability to transcend 



AMERICAN WILD ANIMALS IN AET. 255 

any imaginative conception of him. The stern 
economy of his structure and character, the sure- 
ness and sufficiency of his every manifestation, 
the instinct and capacity which inform all his 
proceedings, — these are things which are con- 
cealed from a hasty glance by the very perfection 
of their state. Once seen and comprehended, 
however, they work upon the mind of the observer 
with an ever increasing power; they lead him 
into a new, strange, and fascinating world, and 
generously recompense him for any effort he may 
have made to penetrate thither. Of that strange 
and fascinating world Mr. Kemeys is the true and 
worthy interpreter, and, so far as appears, the 
only one. Through difficulty and discouragement 
of all kinds, he has kept to the simple truth, and 
the truth has rewarded him. He has done a ser- 
vice of incalculable value to his county, not only 
in vindicating American art, but in preserving to 
us, in a permanent and beautiful form, the vivid 
and veracious figures of a wild fauna which, in 
the inevitable progress of colonization and civil- 
ization, is destined within a few years to vanish 
altogether. The American bear and bison, the 
cimmaron and the elk, the wolf and the 'coon — 
where will they be a generation hence? No- 



256 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

where, save in the possession of those persons who 
have to-day the opportunity and the intelligence 
to decorate their rooms and parks with Mr. 
Kemeys's inimitable bronzes. The opportunity is 
great — much greater, I should think, than the 
intelligence necessary for availing ourselves of it ; 
and it is a unique opportunity. In other words, 
it lies within the power of every cultivated family 
in the United States to enrich itself with a work 
of art which is entirely American ; which, as art, 
fulfils every requirement ; which is of permanent 
and increasing interest and value from an orna- 
mental point of view; and which is embodied in 
the most enduring of artistic materials. 

The studio in which Mr. Kemeys works — a 
spacious apartment — is, in appearance, a cross 
between a barn-loft and a wigwam. Round the 
walls are suspended the hides, the heads, and 
the horns of the animals which the hunter has 
shot; and below are groups, single figures, and 
busts, modelled by the artist, in plaster, terra- 
cotta, or clay. The colossal design of the "Still 
Hunt" — an American panther crouching before 
its spring — was modelled here, before being cast 
in bronze and removed to its present site in Cen- 
tral Park. It is a monument of which New York 



AMERICAN WILD ANIMALS LN ART. 257 

and America may be proud ; for no such powerful 
and veracious conception of a wild animal lias 
ever before found artistic embodiment. The 
great cat crouches with head low, extended 
throat, and ears erect. The shoulders are drawn 
far back, the fore paws huddled beneath the 
jaws. The long, lithe back rises in an arch in 
the middle, sinking thence to the haunches, 
while the angry tail makes a strong curve along 
the ground to the right. The whole figure is 
tense and compact with restrained and waiting 
power; the expression is stealthy, pitiless, and 
terrible ; it at once fascinates and astounds the 
beholder. While Mr. Kemeys was modelling 
this animal, an incident occurred which he has 
told me in something like the following words. 
The artist does not encourage the intrusion of 
idle persons while he is at work, though no 
one welcomes intelligent inspection and criti- 
cism more cordially than he. On this occasion 
he was alone in the studio with his Irish facto- 
tum, Tom, and the outer door, owing to the heat 
of the weather, had been left ajar. All of a 
sudden the artist was aware of the presence of a 
stranger in the room. "He was a tall, hulking 
fellow, shabbily dressed, like a tramp, and looked 



258 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

as if he might make trouble if he had a mind to. 
However, he stood quite still in front of the 
statue, staring at it, and not saying anything. 
So I let him alone for a while ; I thought it would 
be time enough to attend to him when he began 
to beg or make a row. But after some time, as 
he still hadn't stirred, Tom came to the conclu- 
sion that a hint had better be given him to move 
on ; so he took a broom and began sweeping the 
floor, and the dust went all over the fellow ; 
but he didn't pay the least attention. I began 
to think there would probably be a fight ; but I 
thought I'd wait a little longer before doing 
anything. At last I said to him, 'Will you 
move aside, please? You're in my way.' He 
stepped over a little to the right, but still didn't 
open his mouth, and kept his eyes fixed on the 
panther. Presently I said to Tom, ' Well, Tom, 
the cheek of some people passes belief!' Tom 
replied with more clouds of dust; but the 
stranger never made a sign. At last I got tired, 
so I stepped up to the fellow and said to him : 
* Look here, my friend, when I asked you to move 
aside, I meant you should move the other side of 
the door.' He roused up then, and gave himself 
a shake, and took a last look at the panther, and 



AMERICAN WILD ANIMALS IN ART. 259 

said he, 4 That's all right, boss ; I know all about 
the door; but — what a spring she's going to 
make ! ' Then," added Kemeys, self-reproach- 
f ully, " I could have wept ! " 

But although this superb figure no longer dom- 
inates the studio, there is no lack of models as 
valuable and as interesting, though not of heroic 
size. Most interesting of all to the general ob- 
server are, perhaps, the two figures of the grizzly 
bear. These were designed from a grizzly which 
Mr. Kemeys fought and killed in the autumn of 
1881 in the Rocky Mountains, and the mounted 
head of which grins upon the wall overhead, a 
grisly trophy indeed. The impression of enor- 
mous strength, massive yet elastic, ponderous yet 
alert, impregnable for defence as irresistible in 
attack ; a strength which knows no obstacles, and 
which never meets its match, — this impression is 
as fully conveyed in these figures, which are not 
over a foot in height, as if the animal were before 
us in its natural size. You see the vast limbs, 
crooked with power, bound about with huge ropes 
and plates of muscle, and clothed in shaggy 
depths of fur ; the vast breadth of the head, with 
its thick, low ears, dull, small eyes, and long up- 
curving snout ; the roll and lunge of the gait, like 



260 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

the motion of a vessel plunging forward before 
the wind; the rounded immensity of the trunk, 
and the huge bluntness of the posteriors ; and all 
these features are combined with such masterly 
unity of conception and plastic vigor, that the 
diminutive model insensibly grows mighty be- 
neath your gaze, until you realize the monster as 
if he stood stupendous and grim before you. In 
the first of the figures the bear has paused in his 
great stride to paw over and snuff at the horned 
head of a mountain sheep, half buried in the soil. 
The action of the right arm and shoulder, and the 
burly slouch of the arrested stride, are of them- 
selves worth a gallery of pseudo-classic Venuses 
and Roman senators. The other bear is lolling 
back on his haunches, with all four paws in the 
air, munching some grapes from a vine which he 
has torn from its support. The contrast between 
the savage character of the beast and his absurdly 
peaceful employment gives a touch of terrific 
comedy to this design. After studying these 
figures, one cannot help thinking what a noble 
embellishment either of them would be, put in 
bronze, of colossal size, in the public grounds of 
one of our great Western cities. And inasmuch 
as the rich citizens of the West not only know 



AMERICAN WILD ANIMALS IN ART. 261 

what a grizzly bear is, but are more fearless and 
independent, and therefore often more correct in 
their artistic opinion than the somewhat sophis- 
ticated critics of the East, there is some cause for 
hoping that this thing may be brought to pass. 

Beside the grizzly stands the mountain sheep, 
or cimmaron, the most difficult to capture of all 
four-footed animals, whose gigantic curved horns 
are the best trophy of skill and enterprise that a 
hunter can bring home with him. The sculptor 
has here caught him in one of his most character- 
istic attitudes — just alighted from some dizzy 
leap on the headlong slope of a rocky mountain- 
side. On such a spot nothing but the cimmaron 
could retain its footing ; yet there he stands, 
firm and secure as the rock itself, his fore feet 
planted close together, the fore legs rigid and 
straight as the shaft of a lance, while the hind 
legs pose easily in attendance upon them. " The 
cimmaron always strikes plumb-centre, and he 
never makes a mistake," is Mr. Kemeys's laconic 
comment ; and we can recognize the truth of the 
observation in this image. Perfectly at home 
and comfortable on its almost impossible perch, 
the cimmaron curves its great neck and turns its 
head upward, gazing aloft toward the height 



262 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

whence it has descended. " It's the golden eagle 
he hears," says the sculptor ; " they give him 
warning of danger." It is a magnificent animal, 
a model of tireless vigor in all its parts ; a creature 
made to hurl itself head-foremost down appalling 
gulfs of space, and poise itself at the bottom as 
jauntily as if gravitation were but a bugbear of 
timid imaginations. I find myself unconsciously 
speaking about these plaster models as if they 
were the living animals which they represent; 
but the more one studies Mr. Kemeys's works, the 
more instinct with redundant and breathing life 
do they appear. 

It would be impossible even to catalogue the 
contents of this studio, the greater part of which is 
as well worth describing as those examples which 
have already been touched upon ; nor could a more 
graphic pen than mine convey an adequate impres- 
sion of their excellence. But there is here a figure 
of the 'coon, which, as it is the only one ever 
modelled, ought not to be passed over in silence* 
In appearance this animal is a curious medley of 
the fox, the wolf, and the bear, besides I-know-not- 
what (as the lady in "Punch" would say) that 
belongs to none of those beasts. As may be im- 
agined, therefore, its right portrayal involves 



AMERICAN WILD ANIMALS IN ART. 263 

peculiar difficulties, and Mr. Kemeys's genius is 
nowhere better shown than in the manner in 
which these have been surmounted. Compact, 
plump, and active in figure, quick and subtle in 
its movements, the 'coon crouches in a flattened 
position along the limb of a tree, its broad, shal- 
low head and pointed snout a little lifted, as it 
gazes alertly outward and downward. It sustains 
itself by the clutch of its slender-clawed toes on 
the branch, the fore legs being spread apart, while 
the left hind leg is withdrawn inward, and enters 
smoothly into the contour of the furred side ; 
the bushy, fox-like tail, ringed with dark and 
light bands, curving to the left. Thus posed and 
modelled in high relief on a tile-shaped plaque, 
Mr. Kemeys's coon forms a most desirable orna- 
ment for some wise man's sideboard or mantle- 
piece, where it may one day be pointed out as 
the only surviving representative of its species. 

The two most elaborate groups here have 
already attained some measure of publicity; the 
" Bison and Wolves " having been exhibited in 
the Paris Salon in 1878, and the " Deer and Pan- 
ther" having been purchased in bronze by Mr. 
Winans during the sculptor's sojourn in England. 
Each group represents one of those deadly com- 



264 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

bats between wild beasts which are among the 
most terrific and at the same time most natural 
incidents of animal existence; and they are of 
especial interest as showing the artist's power of 
concentrated and graphic composition. A com- 
plicated story is told in both these instances with 
a masterly economy of material and balance of 
proportion ; so that the spectator's eye takes in 
the whole subject at a glance, and yet finds in- 
exhaustible interest in the examination of details, 
all of which contribute to the central effect with- f 
out distracting the attention. A companion 
piece to the " Deer and Panther " shows the same 
animals as they have fallen, locked together in 
death after the combat is over. In the former 
group, the panther, in springing upon the deer, 
had impaled its neck on the deer's right antler, 
and had then swung round under the latter's 
body, burying the claws of its right fore foot in 
the ruminant's throat. In order truthfully to 
represent the second stage of the encounter, 
therefore, it was necessary not merely to model 
a second group, but to retain the elements and 
construction of the first group under totally 
changed conditions. This is a feat of such 
peculiar difficulty that I think few artists in any 



AMERICAN WILD ANIMALS IN ART. 265 

branch of art would venture to attempt it ; never- 
theless, Mr. Kemeys has accomplished it; and 
the more the two groups are studied in connec- 
tion with each other, the more complete will his 
success be found to have been. The man who 
can do this may surely be admitted a master, 
whose works are open only to affirmative criti- 
cism. For his works the most trying of all tests 
is their comparison with one another; and the 
result of such comparison is not merely to con- 
firm their merit, but to illustrate and enhance it. 

For my own part, my introduction to Mr. 
Kerne j^s's studio was the opening to me of a new 
world, where it has been my good fortune to 
spend many days of delightful and enlightening 
study. How far the subject of this writing may 
have been already familiar to the readers of it, I 
have no means of knowing ; but I conceive it to 
be no less than my duty, as a countryman of Mr. 
Kemeys's and a lover of all that is true and 
original in art, to pay the tribute of my appreci- 
ation to what he has done. There is no danger of 
his getting more recognition than he deserves, 
and he is not one whom recognition can injure. 
He reverences his art too highly to magnify his 
own exposition of it; and when he reads what I 



266 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

have set down here, he will smile and shake his 
head, and mutter that I have divined the perfect 
idea in the imperfect embodiment. Unless I 
greatly err, however, no one but himself is 
competent to take that exception. The genuine 
artist is never satisfied with his work ; he per- 
ceives where it falls short of his conception. 
But to others it will not be incomplete ; for the 
achievements of real art are always invested with 
an atmosphere and aroma — a spiritual quality 
perhaps — proceeding from the artist's mind and 
affecting that of the beholder. And thus it 
happens that the story or the poem, the picture 
or the sculpture, receives even in its material 
form that last indefinable grace, that magic light 
that never was on sea or land, which no pen or 
brush or graving-tool has skill to seize. Matter 
can never rise to the height of spirit ; but spirit 
informs it when it has done its best, and ennobles 
it with the charm that the artist sought and the 
world desired. 



*** Since the above was written, Mr. Kemeys has removed 
his studio to Perth Amboy, N. J. 



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14 A List of Boohs Published by 



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16 A List of Books Published by 



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Tichnor and Company. 17 



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18 A List of Boohs Published by Tichnor Sf Co. 



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TICKNOR AND COMPANY'S 

ANNOUNCEMENTS OF 

ILT IE "W IBOOIKIS 

TO BE PUBLISHED DURING THE AUTUMN 
AND WINTER OF 

1886. 

♦ 

The Prices named below are subject to Revision on Publication. 



JUST PUBLISHED. 
A ROMANTIC YOUNG LADY. By Robert Grant, author of 
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This is the latest and one of the strongest works of the successful 
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— London Nooks and Corners — Relics of Lord Byron - Westminster Abbey 

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the Night. 



20 A List of Books Published by 



THE HOLIDAY BOOK OF THE SEASON. 

SCOTT'S THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL. An entirely 
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The immediate and permanent success of '' The Lady of the Lake," 1 ' 
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THE PETERKIN PAPERS. By Lucretia P. HALE. New Holiday 
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MURAL PAINTING. By Frederic Crowninshield. 1vol. Square 
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THE VIRGINIA CAMPAIGN OF GENERAL POPE IN 1862. 

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SONGS AND SATIRES. A volume of poems. By James Jeffrey 
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GENIUS IN SUNSHINE AND IN SHADOW. By M. M. Ballou, 
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Mr. Ballou has for many years been known as one of the most industrious, 
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Ticknor and Company^ 21 

IN OCTOBER. 

A WONDERFUL WORK OF ART. 

Mrs. Browning's !Love Sonnets. 

SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. By Elizabeth Bar- 
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RECOLLECTIONS OF EMINENT MEN, and Other Papers. 

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STORIES OF ART AND ARTISTS. By Clara Erskine Clem- 
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22 A List of Books Published by 



STEADFAST. A Novel. By Rose Terry Cooke, author of "Some- 
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Arlo Bates write? as follows, in the Boston Courier : " A correspondent, 
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CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. By Julian Hawthorne. 
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THE HOUSE AT HICH BRIDGE. By Edgar Fawcett. 1 vol. 
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FOR X ATE B, ISSUE. 

YE OLDEN TIME SERIES. The following are forthcoming vol- 
umes: — 

" Literary Curiosities." 
" New-England Music in the 18th and in the beginning of the 19th 

Century." 
"Travel in Old Times, with Some Account of Stages, Taverns," etc. 
" Curiosities of Politics, among the Old Federalists and Republicans." 

NORA PERRY'S POEMS. 

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A new edition of "Her Lover's Friend" and "After the Ball "(two 
volumes in one) is now in press. 

RANKELL'S REMAINS. A Novel. By Barrett Wendell, author 
of " The Duchess Emilia." 1 vol. 12mo. 

The remarkable success of Barrett Wendell's " The Duchess Emilia," a 
romance of the Colonna family in papal Rome, gives the best reason to hope 
for a similar (or even greater) triumph for his new novel, on which he has 
been engaged for two years. That it will be a strong and original work, no 
one who has read Wendell's previous story can for a moment doubt. 



Tichior and Company. 23 



A MURAMASA BLADE, A Story of Feudalism in Old Japan. By 
Louis Wertheimber. 1vol. 8vo. Beautifully illustrated by Jap- 
anese artists. 83.00. 

Mr. Wertheimber, of a scholarly Austrian family, went to Japan about 
the year 1870, and spent many years there, in the service of the Japanese 
Government. He was an extensive traveller among the inland districts and 
villages ; and contributed many articles and series to the Japan Mill, and 
other publications. The present book is a romance of the sword, full of 
charming local color, true to lite as it is in Japan, and full of deep and en- 
chaining interest. Its mechanical make-up is sumptuous in every respect. 

ACNES SURRIAGE. A Novel. By Edwix Lassetter Byxxer 
author of '• Damen's Ghost," " Penelope's Suitors," etc. 81.50. 

This new novel by the author of " Tritons " and " ^'import " will have a 
large constituenc of readers and admirers. 

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. By Hon. J. S. 

Mo R RILL. $150. 

The well-known and erudite Senator from Vermont has, in this work, 
condensed the fruits of years of curious research in a strantreand unfamiliar 
field. Tlie result is a rarely entertaining volum- of great value to all 
scholars and public men, and interesting to all readers. A small edition 
was privately printed some time since, and met with such praise and appre- 
ciation that Senator Morrill has since carefully revised and materially 
augmented it for publication. 

THE MINISTER'S CHARGE. By W. D. Ho wells, author of "The 
Rise of Silas Lapham," " Indian Summer," etc. 81-50. 

"In this great novel of the people Henry James finds that Mr. Howells 
touches high-water mark ; and sees an important and valuable work in this 
minute and subtle registering of the heav\ -witred countryman's slow de- 
velopment under city conditions. However that may be. Howells's pure, 
inimitable fun is enough to carry any story he may write. Like all true 
fun, this has a most searching pathos all the time just at hand; and never 
is the real dignity of character of this actual Yankee forgotten or trifled 
with." — Bos toil Transcript. 

STORIES AND SKETCHES. By John Boyle O'Rftlly, editor 
of the Pilot, author of '• Moondyne," etc. 12rao. 81.50. 

The great popularity of the author, and the intrinsic merit and interest 
of his wrinngs, will insure a warm reception to this collection of his latest 
and best works. 

SAFE BUILDING. By Louis De Coppet Bekg. 1vol. Square 8vo. 
85.00. 



24 A List of Books Published by Tichnor fy Co. 



THE 

MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON, 

In Four Volumes. Quarto. 

With more than 500 Illustrations by famous artists and engravers, all 
made for this work. 

Edited by JUSTIN WINSOR, Librarian of Harvard University. 

Among the contributors are : — 

Got. John D. Long, Dr. 0. W. Holmes, 

Hon. Charles Francis Adams, John G. Whittieb, 

Rev. Phillips Brooks, D.D., Rev. J F. Clarke, D.D., 

Rev. E. E. Hale, D.D., Rev. A. P. Peabody, D.D., 

Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, Col. T. W, Higginson, 

Hon. J. Hammond Trumbull, Professor Asa Gray, 

Admiral G. H. Preble, Gen. F. W. Palfrey, 
Henry Cabot Lodge. 



Volume I. treats of the Geology, Fauna, and Flora ; the Voyages and Maps of 
the Northmen, Italians, Captain John Smith, and the Plymouth Settlers ; 
the Massachusetts Company, Puritanism, and the Aborigines ; the Lit- 
erature, Life, and Chief Families of the Colonial Period. 

Vol. II. treats of the Royal Governors ; French and Indian Wars ; Witches 
and Pirates ; The Religion, Literature, Customs, and Chief Families of the 
Provincial Period. 

Vol. III. treats of the Revolutionary Period and the Conflict around Boston ; 
and the Statesmen, Sailors, and Soldiers, the Topography, Literature, and 
Life of Boston during that time ; and also of the Last Hundred Years' 
History, the War of 1812, Abolitionism, and the Press. 

Vol. IV. treats of the Social Life, Topography, and Landmarks, Industries, 
Commerce, Railroads, and Financial History of this Century in Boston ; 
■with Monographic Chapters on Boston's Libraries, Women, Science, Art, 
Music, Philosophy, Architecture, Charities, etc. 
— « 



*** 



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LIFE OF HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 

Edited by Rev. Samuel Longfellow. 2 vols. i2mo. With 
5 new steel-engraved portraits and many wood engravings and 
fac-similes. In cloth, $6.00 ; in half calf, with marble edges, $11.00; 
in half morocco, with gilt top and rough edges, $11.00. 

" Altogether the most fascinating book that has been published for months. It 
is full of the most interesting and picturesque and poetic things." — Boston Record. 

" One thinks of the gentle scholar as a man who can never have made an 
enemy, or lost a friend; and we lay down his autobiography (for such the book 
can fairly be called) with a feeling that in these posthumous pages he has opened 
a view of his own soul as beautiful as the creations of his fancy." — New York 
Tribune. 

" It is an admirable piece of biographical work, and the story of the poet's 
career gives a view of the growth of American literature that is full of instruction 
and interest. It is a book that is sure to become a classic both in this country 
and England, and, indeed, in cultivated circles throughout the world." — Boston 
Budget. 

" It is needless to add that the publication of these noble volumes is the literary 
event of the day, that all continents will greet it with delight, and that coming 
ages will quote it affectionately in recalling that Longfellow was not only a pure 
and great poet, which is much, but also a pure and great man, which is more." — 
The Beacon (Boston). 

" These volumes tell the story of his life with exquisite taste ; they also unfold 
a panorama of the literary history of America, and are among the rare and monu- 
mental books of the present century." — Chicago Inter-Ocean. 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE AND HIS WIFE. 

By Julian Hawthorne. With portraits newly engraved on 
Steel and vignettes. Two vols. i2mo. In cloth, $5.00. Half 
morocco or half calf, $9.00. Edition de luxe, numbered copies, 
$12.00. 

The fullest and most charming accounts of Hawthorne's ancestry and family ; 
his boyhood and youth ; his courtship and marriage ; his life at Salem, Lenox, 
and Concord ; his travels and residence in England and Italy ; his later life in 
America ; and his chief works and their motives and origins. 

u It increases my admiration for the character of Hawthorne and my respect 
for his genius as an author." — R. H. Stoddard, in The Critic. 

" The most charming biography of the year, pure and sweet from beginning to 
end." — The Beacon (Boston). 

" Colored with the very hues of life, and bearing the signature of truth. The 
reader will close the book with a new admiration for the pure-minded and honest 
gentleman who was the greatest original writer our country has produced." — New 
York Tribune. 

"And so the inspiration left behind by this biography is that of increase of 
happy faith in the power of high, disinterested love to transmute the prose of daily 
life into poetry, to give beauty for ashes, the garment of praise for the spirit of 
heaviness." — Boston Herald. 

" Leaves on the mind of the reader a clear perception of Hawthorne's moral 
and intellectual character, a vivid impression of his personal traits, disposition, 
and habits, as manifested in the alternations of work and play, in the study, in 
the family, and in society, and a singularly distinct and life-like image of his 
person." — George William Curtis, in Harper's Magazine. 



TICKNOR AND COMPANY, Boston. 



THE STORY 



OF 



Margaret Kent. 



By HENRY HAYES. 
$1.50. 



The Springfield " Republican " says : — 

" In this we have the American novel pure and simple. The style is fascinat- 
ing, the conversation witty and natural." 

And the " Literary World " says : — 

" The author is at work with aims and impulses that are lofty. The book is 
uplifting. It is admirably written, interesting, strong, impressive, helpful." 

And the " Critic " says : — 

" It is a dainty story, full of grace and tenderness and color. We feel her 
bewitching beauty to our finger tips." 

And the Boston " Journal " says : — 

"The novel is thrilling with strong, healthy feeling, unusually marked with 
spontaneity and naturalness." 

And the " Christian Register" says: — 

" Margaret Kent is so beautiful that one dreams of her after only reading about 
her." 

And the Boston " Advertiser " says : — 

" In ' The Story of Margaret Kent ' we have that rare thing in current litera- 
ture, — a really good novel." 

And the " Transcript " says : — 

" There is in the social setting a human life, deep and stirring, beautiful and 
real, which holds our interest, sympathy, and admiration." 

And the Chicago " Inter-Ocean " says : — 

" In its brilliancy of touch, vivid delineation of character, and realistic truth, 
* The Story of Margaret Kent ' is one of the greatest novels of the day." 

MORAL: 

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MR. HOWELLS'S LATEST NOVEL. 

Sixth Edition Now Ready. 

INDIAN SUMMER. 

I VOL I2H10. $1.50. 

The " Christian Register " says that it has more of sweetness than all Howells's 
previous works, that its local color is exquisite, and that " the situation could 
not be more attractive than it is." 

The London "Saturday Review" says: "Around and beneath it all is the 
exquisite Italian atmosphere, in which no one knows better than Mr. Howells how 
to steep his pictures/' 

The Chicago " Tribune " also finds this subtle characterization : " The city to 
which Mr. Howells leads his readers is not the revelling, brilliant Florence of 
Ouida. It is rather the Florence of Hawthorne, — quaint and dreamful. The 
story reminds one of a plant which grows in Old-World gardens, — so unobtrusive 
it is, and yet so rich in suggestion, so subtle-scented." 

The last " Lippincott's Magazine " says : " It will rank with the most charming 
of the author's work. ... It is almost his first spiritual work. Not only has Mr. 
Howells thus risen above his own standards in this latest work, but he has risen 
above the standard of other novelists in one unique respect." 



Twelfth Thousand now ready. 

THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM. 

By W. D. Howells. $1.50. 

" ' The Rise of Silas Lapham ' invited more discussion than any serial since 
1 Daniel Deronda.' " — Publisher's Weekly. 

" The dust of his writings is fine gold. Delightful in its perfection."— Phila- 
delphia Record. 

"The high-water mark of Mr. Howells's great and unique photographic 
genius. " — Pall Mall Gazette. 

" A work of genius ; a great and perfect work of its kind " — New York Star. 

NEW EDITIONS OF MR. HOWELLS'S NOVELS. ($1.50 each.) 

A MODERN INSTANCE. 

DR. BREEN'S PRACTICE. 

A WOMAN'S REASON. 

A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
" There has been no more rigidly artistic writing done in America since Haw- 
thorne's time." — The Critic. 



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JAPANESE HOMES 

And Their Surroundings. By Edward S. Morse, Ph.D., 
Director of the Peabody Academy of Science, late Professor of 
Tokio University, Japan, Member National Academy of Science, 
Fellow American Academy of Arts and Sciences, etc. With 300 
illustrations. 8vo. Richly bound. $5.00. 

" It is a satisfactory and valuable work, and in its way unique." — New York 
Tribune. 

" It is one of the most important of works ever written about one of the most 
fascinating of countries." — Boston Herald. 

" The time is ripest now for the very charming acquaintance we get from Mr. 
Morse's book with these homes. The book will be read by all Americans with 
great profit." —New York Commercial Advertiser. 



CHOSON: 



The Land of the Morning Calm. A Sketch of Korea. 
By Percival Lowell, Foreign Secretary to the Korean Embassy, 
Member Asiatic Society of Japan, etc. Richly illustrated after 
photographs taken in Korea. 8vo. $5.00. 

" A great deal more than a mere narrative of residence in Korea. It goes to 
the bottom of the whole question of the main characteristics of the three far- 
Eastern nations, China, Japan, and Korea, mixing philosophical views, new in- 
formation, personal recollections, and witty remarks in such fashion as to conciliate 
the tastes of all classes of readers. . . . Fortunately for the subject, it has 
been taken in hand by one who had the verve of youth allied with the curiosity 
of the scientist. These serve as torches that light up with a picturesque 
beauty the cavernous recesses of the Hermit Kingdom. . . . The extreme beauty 
of the illustrations." — The Japan Gazette (Yokohama). 

"An interesting and poetic account of a strange, sad country." — Boston 
A dvertiser. 

"A most readable book, sumptuously got up." — New York Commercial 
A dvertiser. 

" We could not spare one of these four hundred pages." — New York Sun. 

" A work of unique merit." — New York Telegram. 

"A charming volume." — Christian Register. 



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A WONDERFUL ROMAN ROMANCE. 

THE PRELATE. 

By Isaac Henderson. With covers richly adorned with em- 
blematic designs by Elihu Vedder. $1.50. 

"A work of singular force and power." — A Ibany Union. 

" It recalls Nathaniel Hawthorne in his most vigorous time." — Quebec 
Chronicle. 

" Henderson is the most promising novelist who, for many a long day, has en- 
tered the field of fiction. . . . It is an unusually good novel." — Detroit News. 

" One of the most brilliant and fascinating romances that has been published in 
many a day. The story is dramatic, powerful, irresistible in its interest as a love 
story alone. The greatest work of the day in imaginative art." — Boston 
Traveller. 

" The Churchman " says : -' We soon found that we had a very powerfully 
written and fascinating story to enjoy. ' The Prelate ' is a novel of modern Italian 
life, involving the Old Catholic movement and the Jesuit intrigues to suppress the 
spread of reform in the papal communion. We think it one of the best, if not 
the best, novels we have met with upon such topics. It is thoroughly well writ- 
ten, not exaggerated, not melodramatic, and the characters admirably drawn and 
finely discriminated. . . . Apart from its great interest and exceptional cleverness 
as a novel, this book is well worth reading." 

The " Christian Union " says : " Here the insight into character, the delicacy 
and fineness of touch, the keenness of analysis, and the firmness of the literary 
method, remind one of Mr. Henry James, but are unaccompanied with prolixity." 



The Northern Pacific Railway's Great Romance. 

THE GOLDEN SPIKE. 

By Edward King. i2mo. $1.50. 

11 One of the brightest and freshest works of fiction of the season. It is breezy 
and inspiring, and the author's vigorous and graceful style was never displayed to 
better advantage. It takes the reader from London to America, through the mar- 
vellous Northwest, and describes scenery and customs with a picturesqueness and 
truthfulness that will thoroughly absorb the attention of even the most blasi 
novel reader." —Boston Budget. 

" Whoever begins to read it will, under its charm, find it difficult to do anything 
else until it is finished. The author, in fact, takes us through wonderland at a pace 
something like that of the railway described. Minnesota, Dakota, Idaho, Mon- 
tana, Oregon, Washington Territory, and British Columbia are spread out before 
us in most graphic descriptions. In conclusion, we may state that Mr. King's 
book is exceedingly attractive." — GalignanVs Messenger (Paris). 



TICKNOR AND COMPANY, Boston. 



JOHN BODEWIN'S TESTIMONY. 

By Mary Hallock Foote, author of " Led-Horse Claim, ,, etc. 
i vol. i2tno. $1.50. 

" Mrs. Foote is only to be compared with our best women novelists. To make 
this comparison briefly, Miss Woolson observes keenly, Mrs. Burnett writes 
charmingly, and Mrs. Foote feels intensely." — The Critic. 

NEXT DOOR. 

By Clara Louise Burnham, author of " Dearly Bought," 
" No Gentlemen," etc. $1.50. 

" ' Next Door' is a love story, pure and simple. The conversations are viva- 
cious, with an exceptional charm. The tone of the book is refined and pure, and 
it will make itself an especial favorite among the summer novels." — Boston 
Traveller. 

TWO COLLEGE GIRLS. 

By Helen Dawes Brown. i2mo. $1.50. 

" A really bright and fresh story. . . . The author has given happy expression 
in a buoyant spirit to a bit of real life of to-day." — New York Commercial 
A dvertiser. 

" It will undoubtedly receive great attention, from the fact that it has a value 
wholly aside from the usual literary value of fiction. It marks an era in American 
literary art." — Boston Traveller. 



THE SPHINX'S CHILDREN. 

By Rose Terry Cooke. i2mo. $1.50. 

Delightful stories of hill-country life in the quaintest and most 
singular parts of New England, set forth with the sparkle and the 
realism of a Parisian feuilletonist. 

" In spite of a style which is carefully clear and elegant, in spite of a tone that 
is wonderfully pure and healthy, what one remembers longest in Mrs. Cooke's 
writings is these dialect passages, forgetting for their sake her delectable descrip- 
tions of quaint, old-fashioned gardens, pretty girls, odd old maids, and odder old 
men, and even forgetting the bit of moral usually concealed in each story." — 
Boston Transcript. 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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